


Supernova

by Stratisphyre



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-19 05:35:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 48,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4734491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stratisphyre/pseuds/Stratisphyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was in the wards when his omni-tool beeped with the message:  <em>The Inquisitor </em>had docked with a twelve hour permit, and Augustine Cadash was aboard The Citadel.</p><p> --</p><p>One hundred years after the Reaper War, The Iridium Bull signs up with <em>The Inquisitor</em> and its crew to get an inside track on Alliance intel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Pairings, rating and certain characters are all tagged for later chapters. 
> 
> Thank you for reading - all comments and kudos are deeply appreciated.

Bull paid a vent rat a hundred credits—total robbery, but the kid looked like he hadn’t seen a decent meal in a few weeks and could stand to have something to chew on besides Keeper shit—to update him on the comings and goings of ships on the Citadel. The kid had designed a pretty nice crack for the docking logs for the ports, and it wasn’t too much of a hassle for him to scrub the results as they came in, parsing the names and sending info Bull’s way.

He was dicking around the wards when his omni-tool beeped with the message: _The Inquisitor _had docked with a twelve hour permit, and Augustine Cadash was aboard The Citadel.__

Finally. After more than a month of stalking her favourite haunts and trying to figure out where the hell she’d disappeared to. Rumour had it she was fighting off some human supremacist group—a Cerberus knockoff that’d starting fucking up everyone’s day over the course of the last year—but there wasn’t anything to substantiate it. Not really. Assholes popped up all the time; the only thing that made this one special was that Cadash herself was looking into it. Back on Par Vollen, the Qunari had a saying: where there were _ataashi_ there was blood. Cadash seemed to follow the same rules.

He nodded towards Krem, who broke off negotiations with one of the bastards trying to overcharge them for some simple maintenance gear, and headed for the skycars.

“Where we off to, chief?” Krem asked.

“The eagle has landed.”

“Starting to regret letting you watch those vids.” Krem grumbled, gamely tucking himself into the passenger seat. He wrapped a tight, white-knuckled grip on the door. “You mean Cadash?” Bull nodded, craning his neck far enough to the side that he could safely drive without his horns scraping up against the inside of the door. “‘Bout time. Grim and Stitches lose any more goddamn money on the gambling circuit and they’re going to be chased out of the system.”

Bull chuckled. His people had been collecting info on Cadash since she’d been promoted to officer—standard procedure for all Alliance personnel. About a year ago, she’d been stripped of rank and kicked out of the Alliance; since then, her file had about tripled in size. Everything they knew about her suggested she’d hit up one of three bars on the lower decks of the Citadel within twenty-four hours of docking. Bull and his guys only had to stake them out until she showed up.

There were a lot of unanswered questions when it came to _The Inquisitor_. The Alliance seemed to be under the impression that it was manned with bounty hunters. BH Command classified them as privateers—then again, they did that with every non-military vessel with suspicious private funding. And that was a secret better locked down than the stripping of Cadash’s rank. Wherever they were getting their credits, it paid enough to let them travel independently and chase down whatever caught their interest.

Krem coordinated the stake outs, and he and Bull ended up at Shepard’s Rest. It was the smallest of the three bars, and apparently run by a relative of the infamous Commander herself. Whether there was any truth to the claim aside, it served the least expensive drinks on the Citadel—insofar as they had the smallest water to alcohol ratio, anyway.

They set up in a small corner table with clear line of sight on the door.

“According to your vent rat, _The Inquisitor’s_ only docked overnight,” Krem said, scanning the report. “She might not even show up to her regular haunts if they’re heading out again right away.”

“She’ll show,” Bull said. “And even if she doesn’t, I asked Quarry to stick a transmitter on her hull.”

“Great idea, chief. Nothing gets a lady off on the right foot like stalking her,” Krem muttered.

“How would you know what gets the ladies off?”

“Fuck you, chief.”

Bull laughed and slapped Krem’s shoulder. He got his hand back uninjured; Krem must’ve known he was kidding.

They waited, nursing the same few drinks, until 2248. Krem was getting obviously droopy, Bull had exhausted the number of red heads in the bar, and none of the others had gotten back with a sighting.

“You jinxed us, Krem.”

Krem muttered something incomprehensible into the dregs of his drink—it was probably better for both of them that Bull hadn’t heard.

Finally, at about 0015, both of them getting ready to call it a night and rely on less direct means of putting themselves in contact, Cadash walked in the door.

Bull knew about humans from the Thaig system. Hell, Rocky’s mother had been from there. He knew what to expect from a Dwarf: short, large muscle mass, typically the sort of ‘fuck off’ attitude he liked. Cadash probably only came up to his waist, with intricate tattoos spread in structured architectural lines from her chin to her brow. Her skin was a few shades darker than he expected from her service picture, and her black hair was pulled back and away from her face in tight rows of braids that swept out into a sea of wiry curls. Overall, she looked like someone who could fuck him up if she was inclined. At least with a carefully placed punch at eye level. Her eye level, anyway.

Her companion was an unusually tall yet typically severe-looking Turian; likely her second-in-command, Cassandra Pentaghast. She had a file all her own; not many people could tack ‘ex-Spectre’ onto their resumes. 

Bull waited about half an hour, until Cadash was starting to shoot furtive glances at the door and was obviously giving up on whatever contact she was here to meet, before he decided it was time.

“Want to introduce me?” Bull asked Krem.

Krem nodded and stood—only slightly wobbly, which spoke to some impressive stamina on his part—and headed across the bar. Cadash greeted him with a broad grin and an appreciative once-over; Cassandra with a quiver in her fringe that suggested she’d like to break him over her knee. Less than a minute later, Krem waved him over.

“Ladies,” Bull said, dropping into a chair across from them. Cadash gave him an appreciative once-over, too. Bull liked her; she had taste. “Let me introduce myself. They call me The Iridium Bull.” He grinned.

“Iridium Bull,” Cadash repeated, as though she couldn’t quite believe the words coming out of her mouth. Despite that, she had a keen eye, and her appreciation quickly turned into something more analytical.

“ _The_ Iridium Bull. I like having an article at the front. It makes it sound like I’m not even a person, just a mindless weapon, an implement of destruction... That really works for me.”

“Right.” She leaned back in her chair. “What can I do for you?”

“I’ve heard impressive things about you and your crew. I was wondering if you’d be interested in taking a few more people aboard. Many hands, light work and all that.”

“No,” Cadash said. “No Qunari simply wants to sign up aboard a private ship without an ulterior motive. You’re either Tal Vashoth—and don’t get me wrong, I’ve met some perfectly lovely TV Qunari—who need a quick escape from the bastards sent to kill them.” Bull clenched his fist under the table. “Or you’re one of the bastards. Which is it?”

“Bit of both,” Bull admitted. “I pose as TV to get an in with people who aren’t fans of the Qun. But I’m in active contact with our Ben-Hassrath Command. They heard you were the one to talk to if we wanted to get good with the Alliance through backdoor means.”

“I need a lot more to drink before anything goes in my back door.”

Her Turian made a pained noise that shuffled out of her fringe in a huff of air. Bull grinned. 

“But I’m afraid you’re barking up the wrong door. Might want to update your files, because the Alliance and I don’t get along anymore. _The Inquisitor_ isn’t an Alliance vessel, my crew aren’t Alliance soldiers and the fact that they still call me ‘Commander’ is because my people are terrible at breaking old habits.” 

Cassandra looked annoyed, but didn’t refute the fact.

“Yeah, which makes it perfect for us. I know you still get Alliance communiques, and if you’d be willing to share them with me, I’d be willing to share the intel I get from my people with you.”

Cadash’s eyes hardened. “Just because I’m not Alliance doesn’t mean I’m willing to commit treason.”

“Not treason. My people don’t always get Alliance news passed along, even when it directly effects us. You send me anything you get not categorized as confidential and I’ll do the same.” 

Cadash considered him through narrow eyes. “Seems to me you could find other ways of doing this.” 

“Yeah, but then it’s all Batarian whispers. This way, I forward it right from the main source. No hearsay, no embellishments, no speculation. And to sweeten the pot, I bring along my guys to help you aboard your ship.”

“You think we need mercenaries aboard?” Cassandra demanded.

“My guys aren’t just mercs. They’re the toughest, baddest ass group of assholes you’ll ever know. And from what I hear has gone down between you and the Venatori, having a group of professional ass kickers along would be an asset.” 

Cadash stared at him, peering over the rim of her glass with narrowed eyes. “How many?” 

“About a dozen.”

Cassandra gaped at her; or, as much a she could under the hard bone ridging her eye sockets. “You’re not seriously considering this.” 

“I am, actually.” Cadash straightened. “We ship out at 0700 tomorrow. Get your asses on board and stowed by then. You get a probationary six months like everyone else on my crew. We’ll see how it goes. You fuck us over, you eat atmo. Get it?” 

“Got it, _Commander_.” 

Cadash sighed and tossed back the remainder of her shot without a blink. Business concluded, Bull stood, and Krem quickly crossed the space between them, settling at Bull’s left side. 

“Do you want me to salute?” he asked.

“Fuck off, Bull.” 

He saluted anyway and Cadash returned it with an obscene hand gesture. 

“She’s terrifying,” Krem confided as they made their way back to the scuzzy little apartment where the others were holed up. 

“That get you hot?” Bull asked. 

“It does, actually.”

Bull chuckled.

* * *

Bull’s people had dossiers on every known member of _The Inquisitor’s_ crew, but there were reports that suggested the Commander had gotten into the habit of picking up randoms from across the galaxy and offering them commissions aboard her ship. It was part of what led to her falling out with the Alliance. Well. Blowing up one of their research facilities probably didn’t do her any favours, either, though even the best and brightest of the Ben-Hassrath haven’t been able to get into that set of sealed files.

Coming aboard, he already knew the command crew from their files, though it was nice to connect faces to names instead of holos. The rest of the crew was majority human but there were exceptions. Bull was the only Qunari, obviously, and judging from the side-eyes he kept getting, he was the first they’d seen.

He was still getting the guys settled into the barracks put aside for them when he was paged to the briefing room.

“Good luck, chief,” Krem said from the top bunk he was still defending from Grim’s attempts at a hostile takeover.

Bull winked and headed for the lift. The ship’s VI had sent schematics to him and the Chargers once they’d gotten on board, and he had a vague notion where he was going, at least. Skyhold-class vessels had initially been intended for colony migration—extended living quarters added in to hold families for long periods of time. _The Inquisitor_ had more than a few mods that made it battle ready, though he didn’t trust its maneuverability worth a damn. Not without one hell of a pilot.

He made it to the right floor before a three-way intersection gave him pause.

Fortunately, the VI seemed on the ball. “The Iridium Bull, if you take the left corridor and follow it to the end of the hallway, you’ll find Commander Cadash as well as her command team waiting.”

Whoever programmed it must’ve been a beast with coding; it sounded real enough that Bull could almost envision someone walking at his side.

Bull found them right where the ship said they’d be.

“I have found The Iridium Bull for you, Commander,” the VI announced as Bull entered the room. “Will there be anything else?”

The Commander shook her head, her attention still obviously on the Galaxy Map. “Thanks, COLE. Nothing for now.” She finally looked up. “Everyone, meet The Iridium Bull. He and his troop are joining up to help us with the Venatori.”

She began pointing around the table. “Bull, you know Cassandra, my XO. Fen’Harel vas Solas. That’s Blackwall. Vivienne. Sera’Jenyy vas Inquisitor. Dagna is my Head Science Officer. Josephine Montilyet takes care of everything important. And Varric Tethras, our pilot, is up top.”

“I will convey your greetings to him, The Iron Bull,” the VI added. There was a brief pause. “Mr. Tethras informs me that you have added significant weight to _The Inquisitor_ which will impede his ability to properly pilot the vessel. However, I believe these calculations to be incorrect, as the Skyhold has a functional capacity of five thousand six hundred and fifty-four, with only 38% current occupancy. I will advise him of this error as soon as I complete my own assessment.”

“That won’t be necessary, COLE. Varric was joking,” the Commander said. She sounded suspiciously fond—Bull filed it away. It was always interesting when people started warming up to what was supposed to be a VI.

“I will cease auxiliary calculations, then.”

The Commander gestured to the map, and everyone turned their attention back to it. “The Venatori have been making waves in a lot of human colonies, especially ones that are still recovering from the destruction of the Mass Relays. From what we’re able to tell, they’ve got a substantial following on Matumaini - we’ve got a team planetside, and they’ve sent me the coordinates for what looks like a research facility. We’re going to shuttle down and rendezvous with them about five miles east, then do some old fashioned explosive reconnaissance.”

“‘Explosive reconnaissance,’” Bull repeated. “I like it.”

“Good, because you’re going to be coming with me.”

Cassandra’s throat vibrated with a disgruntled trill. “I don’t condone this course of action, Commander. We don’t know this ‘Iridium Bull’ at all. Take Blackwall.”

Bull sort of respected her more for the distrust, as much as he could already tell it was going to be a pain in the ass.

“Field tests are the best way to get acquainted with a new asset.” The Commander winked at him. Krem would be deliciously jealous. “Dorian and Lace will meet with us at 0500 tomorrow. Sera?”

“Gussie?”

“You up for shooting some shit?”

“Always.”

“Good. Bull, meet us in the shuttle bay at 0430. Everyone dismissed.”

‘Lace’ he knew. Lace Harding was another Thaig system Dwarf who’d been serving with _The Inquisitor_ since before Cadash had gotten her hands on it and stayed aboard when she liked Cadash’s pitch. But Dorian? His people were falling down on the job—he wasn’t sure who Dorian was. Maybe the unknown human they’d picked up from Omega a few months ago; they’d gotten the report on it, but been unable to get many details. _The Inquisitor’s_ security systems had gotten a definite upgrade since Cadash had taken control, and he was starting to suspect he knew why.

He kept quiet until he made it back to the lift. If there was something hinky with their VI, Quarry could find out about it. And if they caught her at it—something no VI had managed in the years since she’d left Rannoch—they’d know for sure.

“What’s COLE stand for?” he asked the ceiling.

“Compassionate Output Logic Engine,” he replied. “I have been informed that I have uncannily realistic mannerisms.”

“That you do,” Bull mused. He grinned and tapped the wall with his knuckles. “We’re going to get on fine.”

* * *

They shuttled down to the planet at 0500, as promised. Space travel messed with your perception of time, but Bull was pretty sure that it felt as early as the clock said. Sera and the Commander looked bright and chipper. Or, well, as much as they could behind their blast helmets. The Commander had a couple of small pistols hooked into her side, and Sera was carrying what was, without a doubt, the sexiest looking sniper rifle he’d ever seen.

About halfway down, he noticed her keen eyes on him again. “See something you like?” He spread his legs a bit and the Commander laughed.

Cadash tilted her head towards him. “I keep wondering if your horns are as big as your—” The engine roar drowned her out. 

They reached the surface a few minutes later. As soon as they jumped out, the ground party emerged from behind a small outcropping of rocks. Lace Harding’s picture did her justice, for once, though her hair was coiled behind her head a bit differently.

And then Dorian. Well. Bull’d always said the pretty ones were the most dangerous.

“Commander,” Harding said. Her arm twitched at her side like she was physically restraining herself from saluting. “We’ve been tracking Venatori movements in and out of the facility for the past week. There’s been about fifteen coming and going, but the facility is big enough that there might be more inside.”

“Thanks, Harding. Any indigenous wildlife going to be jumping me on my way in?”

Harding smirked. “Not this time.”

“Thank god. Head back up to _The Inquisitor_ ,” Cadash said. “Get COLE to add your findings into the system. He’s got some weird formula that he says will predict their movements if we give him enough info to work with.”

Harding nodded, refrained from saluting again, and hopped back onto the shuttle.

“Bull, this is Dorian Pavus. Dorian, The Iridium Bull.”

Dorian eyed him speculatively, his gaze zeroing in on his cybernetic eye for only a moment before taking in the rest of him. If Bull hadn’t been wearing armour, he would’ve flexed. He finally finished whatever silent assessment he’d made. “I thought Cassandra put a moratorium on bringing more strays aboard.”

“What can I say? They keep finding me.”

“So I see.” There was some heat in the look Dorian passed Bull’s way, but it was gone in an instant like evaporating dew.

The Commander took point, and they fell into a natural pattern behind her. It wasn’t difficult terrain—a few rocks here or there, but the path was smooth and they made good time. About half a mile in he spotted the first of the sensors lining the road.

“Should I—” He raised his assault rifle.

“Needn’t bother. I already overrode them,” Dorian said. “As far as their security is concerned, it’s going to be a blissfully firefight-free day.”

“Sick,” Sera said, delighted.

They made a stealthy approach as far as they could go, but it was all open ground for about a hundred feet around the entrance to the facility. It was carved into a solid rock face that stretched out behind it into a small mountain range; meant it was less likely they had a back door, at least.

“Two security flanking the door,” the Commander said. “Probably live radio feeds, if their other bases are anything to go on. Still. Sera?”

Sera picked the two of them off with one carefully-placed shot apiece; their heads rocked back, one after another, with surgical precision only seconds apart.

“That’s the hottest thing I’ve seen all day,” Bull admitted. Krem was a fantastic shot with a sniper rifle, but liked his dramatic shots more than his killing ones.

“Eww. Keep your thingy away from my baby,” Sera ordered.

They weren’t more than halfway across the open ground when the door opened and a river of Venatori toughs came rushing out.

“No more than fifteen,” the Commander huffed, firing wildly into the crowd. There were a few heavy-looking crates closer to the entrance, as long as they could get to them unmutilated.

“We said it was an estimate!” Dorian replied. He flung his hand out, and the eerie blue biotic glow enveloped his arm for a mere second before three of the Venatori were sent flying. They crashed into the side of the mountain and didn’t get back up.

Sera picked off two more; she took her time with shots that weren’t a sure thing. 

Bull enjoyed finally getting to shoot something. Krem said Bull customized his ammo to make it especially showy, but he couldn’t help it that exploding bullets came hand in hand with a little extra panache.

The Venatori took cover as Dorian and Sera skidded to a stop behind one of the crates, leaving Bull and the Commander behind another.

“Your horns are sticking up,” Cadash muttered.

“The left one is mostly synthetic,” Bull said. “Got blasted off during a gunfight a few years back. This isn’t my first rodeo.”

Sera guffawed. “Bull. Rodeo. I geddit.”

“We all got it, Sera,” Dorian replied.

“Shut it, you.”

They all seemed to be using variants on the old Carnifex models. He counted shots, ducked out of cover once they reached the max in the clip and picked off the Venatori who’d been firing.

In the temporary ceasefire, the Commander stood and whipped a grenade over top of the crate behind which the remaining Venatori were hiding. Seconds later, they had a clear path to the door.

“Gotta love a woman who packs a hand grenade,” Bull murmured.

“You keep hitting on the Commander and Josephine’s going to have COLE deactivate the water recycling next time you’re in the shower,” Dorian commented.

“Then I guess we’d have to share,” Bull grinned.

“Ugh.” Dorian nose wrinkled in disgust, but there was a shadow of a blush flitting across the bridge of his nose. “Where did you find this one, Commander?”

“He found me,” the Commander said. “Come on.”

Everyone who’d been in the front room had apparently come out to play already; the inside was completely empty. The only terminal in the room seemed to have been deliberately short-circuited, but Dorian headed over to inspect it anyway.

The Commander began poking through the crates, trusting Sera and Bull to watch the room’s entrances. There were two beside the door; one was obviously controlled by the battered console. The other was half-opened. He kept his eyes on that one.

Dorian cursed softly. “Shit.”

The Commander glanced his way, surprised enough that Bull wondered what it took to get a swear out of him on a normal day.

“What?”

“These logs are gibberish,” Dorian said, “completely corrupted. But all the files have Alexius’ signature.”

“Is he here?” the Commander demanded.

“Possibly.”

“Great.” The Commander looked Bull’s way. “Alexius is one of the leaders of the Venatori, and if we have a hope in hell of getting any information out of him, we need to take him alive.”

“Gotcha,” Bull said, “What should I be on the lookout for?”

“Tacky facial hair,” Dorian sniffed. There was an undercurrent in his voice—something Bull wasn’t entirely sure of. Something to keep in mind, anyway. “Perhaps refrain from headshots until we have him in custody.”

“That goes for you, too, Sera.”

Sera sniffed. “Whatever. Harder to hit ‘em in the kneecaps anyway. More of a challenge, right?”

Dorian finished with the console and the closed door slid open with a begrudging groan. They all braced for another wave of Venatori, and Sera at least seemed disappointed when none emerged. Cadash took point again, leading them into a dimly-lit hallway and down a steep incline—into the heart of the mountain. Bull bent his knees a bit to stop his horns from scraping against the ceiling.

“Looks uncomfortable,” Dorian murmured.

“My left ACL is two-thirds biofibre,” Bull said. “Takes a lot to bother it, these days.”

Beyond the next blast door was another knot of Venatori. Dorian dropped a singularity on them, allowing Bull and Sera to take them out at their leisure. True to her word, Sera kept it mostly to their kneecaps. Both their kneecaps. Bull had to admire the efficiency.

They checked for this Alexius guy and then left them whining on the floor—disarmed, and with threats of being literally so if they tried anything.

“Alexius…?” Bull said as they continued through the labyrinthine corridors.

“Gerion Alexius. A brilliant scientist and biotic,” Dorian said.

“If by ‘brilliant’ you mean ‘evil’ and you add the modifier ‘mad’ to the scientist bit,” the Commander muttered.

Dorian’s mouth snapped shut, and he didn’t seem inclined to continue.

The Commander shrugged and took up the rest. “Alexius is one of the leaders of the Venatori. I met him on Omega a few months ago, when he was there trying to recruit every biotic he could find. He tried to kill me, Dorian intervened, and we’ve been tracking him down ever since.” She glanced at Dorian and her gaze softened a bit. “Am I missing anything?”

Dorian took the peace offering for what it was. “We’ve been getting Venatori intel from his son, Felix. We’re not entirely sure what his end game is, but none of the people he hired on Omega have reappeared. It’s concerning.”

They reached another blast door and Dorian took point as he investigated the control console.

“Ben-Hassrath Command has been tracing Venatori activities, too,” Bull said. “More than a few biotics have disappeared. Not only humans, either. We’ve got about a thousand files on disappearances that we’ve traced back to them.”

“This puzzle is really starting to look like someone giving us the finger,” the Commander said. “Can you get me those files?”

“Sure thing, Boss,” Bull nodded.

“This blasted thing has an eight layer encryption!” Dorian snapped suddenly. “What could they possibly need to hide that deep?”

Before Bull could speculate, the door finally slid open, Dorian grinning at it with more teeth than happiness. The room beyond was dark, though lights flickered on as Cadash took a step inside. As they drew nearer to the stations, the lights lit one by one overhead. It was some sort of lab, built directly into what looked like a natural cave. Huge enough to house a few different workbenches, each one sitting directly in front of huge pieces of black metal.

“What the shite,” Sera gasped.

“That’s…” Dorian began.

“Reaper tech,” the Commander said, craning her neck to look up at the enormous remnant in front of them. “The Venatori are experimenting with Reaper tech.”


	2. Status: Sent

> Private Terminal  
> (Email)
> 
> To: Gatt  
> Subject: Preliminary Findings  
> Status: Sent  
> Attachments: XO55486, XO48752
> 
> Gatt,
> 
> Attached two Alliance reports retrieved from the Inquisitor’s data banks:
> 
> 55486 – Council report detailing recent Krogan movement in the Annos Basin.   
> 48752 – Recent Salarian report about the affects of yogurt on Elcor brain chemistry (this one’s a laugh and a half, Gatt).
> 
> Initial assessment of the Inquisitor aligns with our expectations. Command crew numbers nine. There are about 2100 other crew members in support positions. None of the reports we had on Commander Cadash do her justice. 
> 
> Looks like she’s still got some strong connections in the Alliance military. Someone’s feeding her a lot of intel.
> 
> Pretty sure they have an unshackled AI on board. I’ll send confirmation once I’ve figured out if it’s not just a well-programmed VI.
> 
> Dossier/File Updates: 
> 
> Unidentified Human Male NU574865-9 – Dorian Pavus. Biotic – pretty powerful one, too. Unknown origins, though based on his accent I’d put him from somewhere in the Tevene Cluster. 
> 
> Personnel Dossier NI574865-6 – I get the feeling that Vivienne is here for the same reason I am. There’s no way she’s not reporting all this shit back to Thessia. 
> 
> Personnel Dossier NI574865-2 – Never met a Quarian with a superiority complex quite like Fen’Harel. Wouldn’t be notable, but Quarry tells me _The Solas_ doesn’t exist. Something to look into. 
> 
> Intercepted Transcript from the Citadel FD224418 – She’s talking to Leliana. Yeah. _That_ Leliana. I was shocked, too. 
> 
> Hissrad 6548


	3. Chapter 3

Admiral Rutherford was impressive, for a human. Tall. Strong-looking even over vid-com. It was clear he was aware of the others in the room, but paid close attention to the Commander.

“Were you able to retrieve anything from their systems?” he asked.

“Nothing more than we have to date,” the Commander replied. “Whatever they’re using to wipe down their info, it’s better than our recovery tools.” Dorian shifted guiltily, but no one pointed the finger of blame his way.

“I thought all the Reapers were destroyed utterly,” Cassandra said. Rutherford shifted his attention slightly to the Commander’s right. “How is it they were able to get any of their technologies?”

“After Commander Shepard ended the Reaper War, there were bits and pieces of Reapers scattered all across the galaxy,” Rutherford said. “Most of it on Earth, as you well know. And that’s where we focused the bulk of our clean up. But while the majority of the Reaper fleet gathered in the Local Cluster, there were a few unaccounted for. It seems that whatever Commander Shepard did wasn’t one hundred percent effective. Whether the Venatori picked up bits and pieces from Earth or somewhere else in the galaxy is something you’ll have to find out for yourself.” He typed something into the tool he was using to communicate. “I’ve forwarded you a report outlining what information I currently have access to. It’s mostly been redacted, but there are a few pieces of info I think you’ll find interesting.”

“Great,” the Commander muttered. “In the meantime, how much tech do they have?”

“And what are they using it for?” Dorian added.

“I’ll leave those questions in your capable hands.” Rutherford frowned. “Councillor Justinia currently has her hands tied with disagreements with the other council members regarding some of our renewed colonization plans, but she does have a vested interest in your investigation. Keep us advised.”

“Will do. Cadash out.”

Rutherford flickered out of existence and Cadash dropped into her chair, chin in hands.

“COLE, how’s that detection algorithm going?” she asked after a long moment of silence.

“Based on current occupational trends, I estimate the ability to track down the Venatori with 75% accuracy,” COLE replied.

“Get us a list of places and send them to my Galaxy Map,” the Commander said. “It feels like this whole mess has given us a deadline.”

“I’m happy to help however I can,” COLE replied.

“Everyone keep an eye out for updated duty rosters,” she continued. “Dagna, I’m sorry, but until we’ve got this figured out, you’re going to have to put in some overtime.”

“Are you kidding?” Dagna asked. “I’ve been dreaming about looking into Reaper tech since I was old enough to see the vids of what it can do.” She blinked and shied back into her seat. “Within ethical guidelines, of course.”

The Commander’s smile was thin and mostly empty. “You’re ethics are bound to be better than the Venatori’s,” she said. “That’s all, everyone.”

“Before you go,” Josephine said as everyone was rising. “I have sent along a few notes about equipment upgrades…”

Bull was up out of his chair before she finished. He still had to wade through the hundred emails he’d gotten from her since coming aboard.

He and Dorian ended up in the lift at the same time. The last ship he’d served on with the Chargers, it had taken less than a minute to get between floors. _The Inquisitor_ took a bit longer. He was perversely grateful for the chance to ruffle Dorian’s feathers a bit more.

“You know, I had family in the Seheron system,” Dorian said.

“Oh?” Bull asked.

“Yes. Your people drove them entirely off world.” He side-eyed Bull, though it wasn’t with the barely-veiled hostility Bull typically expected from people in similar situations.

As though he could read Bull’s mind, COLE jumped in. “Based on his experiences with fellow Tevene Cluster colonists, I would estimate Dorian’s interest in their overall value to be negligible,” COLE stated.

Dorian glared at the ceiling. “COLE, what have we talked about?” Before COLE could respond, Dorian shook his head. “I have a vested interest in the Tevene Cluster colonies. I believe my people capable of great things, if they’d stop being petty and isolationist. But we were hit hard by the destruction of the Relays, and I’m afraid there’s still a long ways to go before we’re able to rebuild even a fraction of the trust we once had. Perhaps having a common enemy to unite us with Council Space is the best way to go about it.” He seemed to be talking mostly to himself, eyes down and brow furrowed.

“Well, the Qunari are good at being that,” Bull told him.

“You’d best be careful, otherwise the Turians might take biological exception to your expansion efforts.”

“It’s sweet that you’re worried.” Bull grinned. “I like sweet.”

Dorian rolled his eyes. “COLE, could you please drop me off on the next level? I’m going to speak with Dagna.”

The lift stopped almost immediately and Dorian stepped out.

“The Iridium Bull, may I record your failed attempt at flirtation? Keeping my records up to date help me identify how I can best be of use to the members of the crew.”

Bull snorted in amusement. “Sure thing, kid. And better keep your pen handy. He’s fun to play with, I can tell already.”

“I do not use a pen, The Iridium Bull.”

Bull chuckled.

* * *

As much as Bull wasn’t a fan of fighting Venatori back and forth through carbon-copied labs across the galaxy, docking in a crowded station in hopes of chasing them down wasn’t his ideal either. The Solterra was a human station based in one of the systems absolutely ravaged by the Reapers attack, the main waypoint for the terraforming they were still struggling with to bring their outlying colonies back to a point where they could support life. It put the Venatori in the dangerous position of being around humans already frustrated with the state of the galaxy—seemed like a prime recruitment spot. 

They’d squirreled themselves away in the service areas, staking out wide spans of oversized tunnels to try and keep themselves hidden from the station’s security teams. Unfortunately, it meant a lot of leaping over cables as Bull followed the Commander through the enclosed space.

Dorian sent one of the laggers smashing into the side of the tunnel and jumped over his fallen body easily, keeping pace with the Commander as she blasted her way through several more.

“Must be a handy skill to have in bed,” Bull commented, knocking one of the Venatori off his feet with a shot to the shoulder.

“My biotics?” Dorian said, whipping out a singularity and giving the Commander an open shot at three more. 

“Yeah. Hold someone down with a flick of the wrist, keep them begging and at your mercy,” Bull waggled his eyebrows. “Unless you prefer to be the one held down?” 

“You’re both gross,” Sera informed them. She finished off the last bundle of resistance and reloaded her rifle. 

“Me? What have I done?” Dorian demanded.

Sera sniffed. “You like it, don’t even lie. Otherwise you wouldn’t be giving him so many openings.”

“Scurrilous lies.” Dorian cast his gaze around, ignoring Bull’s expansive grin and presumably looking for something to focus on other than Bull’s arms. Like Bull hadn’t already caught him looking. He finally landed his attention on Cadash, crouched next to one of the bodies. “Commander?”

“Here.” She pulled a small plastic business identifier out of his pocket. “Each of them had one.” Bull snuck a peek over Dorian’s shoulder: a local restaurant, specializing in ‘New Italian.’ “Anyone hungry?”

“You know, I could eat,” Bull said, thoughtfully.

They made their way back through the service tunnels, Bull narrowly avoiding scraping his horns against the walls and ceiling. It was blind luck he hadn’t already gouged irreparable damage into the sides.

The Solterra station, outside of its dim and too-humid service tunnels, was actually a beautiful place. Realistic vids of the skies Humans would’ve known from their home planet lit every corridor, carefully timed with the clocks scattered around the station to give as much an impression of natural light as possible. They’d migrated a lot of plants onto the station, too. Species he recognized from briefings of Earth; succulents, he was pretty sure.

The only problem with it being a human station was that, barring a couple of harried-looking Asari, he and Sera were the only aliens aboard. And the more time they spent following the Commander around, the more attention they started to draw.

They made it to the level advertising a wide host of restaurants without an incident, but as soon as they stepped into the door of the one they’d been looking for, all conversation inside wound to a halt.

A stricken-looking server appeared from behind the hostess booth. “I’m sorry, but this establishment is more tailored towards human clients.” She smiled nervously. “I’d be happy to recommend a few other places nearby that might be better suited to your tastes.”

“My great-aunt was human,” Bull said.

“I could be anything under this get up, really. You never know,” Sera agreed.

The waitress looked helplessly back towards the passé, where the kitchen hands were glaring, but conceded and grabbed a few menus from the pocket on the side of her booth. She led them through the dining room, completely devoid of other patrons, to the largest table in the far corner. The wicker chair groaned under Bull’s weight, and he shifted around in it a few times, making sure he had half an eye on the kitchen door.

“Our specials today are, uh…” She shifted nervously as the glares from the kitchen intensified. “I’m sorry. I’m…”

“Hey, no problem,” the Commander assured her. She leaned in closer to the waitress and her voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t want you to get into any trouble, so just nod your head. There are some bad men working here, aren’t there? Ones who don’t like aliens very much?”

“Vegetarian lasagne!” she finally said, nodding her head with such force Bull feared she’d give herself whiplash. “The ingredients are all sourced on the station.” She handed out menus. “And the meatballs are synthetic beef. You can barely taste the difference.”

“You can always taste the difference,” Dorian muttered. 

Bull threw an arm around his shoulders. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’m sure they’ll be great.”

The glaring was starting to reach critical levels; someone was going to have an aneurysm any second. 

“What’s your name?” the Commander asked.

“Alice,” the waitress said, starting to look a little pale.

“Well, Alice. It’s looking pretty dead in here, and I have a feeling it’s going to get a lot deader pretty quick. Why don’t you take a break? Me and my friends will put in our own orders.” 

Alice nodded and made her way back to her podium, grabbed her purse and practically ran out the door. 

As soon as she was gone, the Commander stood up. “Your buddies in the East Rotation told me your pasta is crap.”

The door to the kitchen slammed open, and one of the sous chefs ran at her with a kitchen knife. 

Twenty minutes later, the dining room was in shambles, and an angry-looking Alliance officer was standing amidst the remnants of what had been a twenty-litre can of plum tomatoes. The Venatori recruiters were all bound and gagged against the wall, a second officer going through the process of trying to undo the complicated knots Bull had tied to keep them in place. 

“They’re never getting out,” Dorian commented.

“Knots are a specialty of mine,” Bull told him, grinning ear to ear.

Dorian deigned not reply. 

“What you’re saying,” the first Alliance officer continued, reviewing his tablet as he read through the Commander’s statement. “Is that this entire restaurant is a front for the Venatori?” 

“Well, how else would a place that serves synthetic meat stay in business?” the Commander asked. 

The Alliance officer tapped out a few more notes. “And how did you come by this information?” 

Before the Commander could respond, two more officers pushed their way into the restaurant. One of them, a sneering, pinch-faced old man, narrowed in on the Commander immediately. 

“Well, and here I thought we vented all the garbage this morning,” he said. 

The Commander’s eyes hardened. “Always a pleasure, Denam. Didn’t know you’d been assigned to station policing. Must be good for your hairline.”

“Corporal, has this woman identified herself to you, yet?” Denam demanded.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you know you’re addressing one of the greatest disappointments of the Alliance?” He surveyed the room with a sweeping gaze. “I assume you have an excuse for this mess beyond disappointment in the service?”

“The service was fantastic, it was the kitchen staff that sucked,” the Commander replied. “We cleaned up a few more of them in the tunnels under the East rotation.”

“We found your handiwork. Do you have a good reason for shooting up my station?” 

“If I’d known it was your station, I would’ve done it for shits and giggles.” 

Knowing that the Alliance weren’t big fans of your new commanding officer and getting a firsthand glimpse into the seriously fucked up dynamics that came into play between her and Alliance personnel were totally different, apparently. Bull felt torn between wanting to punch the guy in the face and escort the Commander back to _The Inquisitor_ before she got herself arrested.

“Sir, the Venatori were using this location as a base of operations,” the Corporal who’d been helping them interrupted. “I took her statement, and it’s corroborated by the hostess. Seems like they’ve been operating here for a while.”

The officer levelled a glare the Corporal’s way, though he stood firm under the scrutiny. “See Miss Cadash off my station. We don’t tolerate this sort of violence from civilian personnel.” He frowned. “Consider yourself banned from Solterra.”

“I’ll add it to the list.”

He turned on his heel and removed himself from the station. 

The Corporal watched him go before leaning in towards them. “I had family in the Fereldan Expanse Thank you.”

A real smile—not the sarcastic grimace she’d been sporting until then—crawled across the Commander’s face. “Sorry, but I’ll have leave this mess with you, it seems.”

“I’ll live.” He nodded to the rest of them, and the Commander led them back out onto the main corridor. Unsurprisingly, there was a contingent of security personnel to escort them out. 

“What happened in the Fereldan Expanse?”

The Commander paused in her step and looked at Bull shrewdly. He’d been on the receiving end of her quiet consideration before, but something this time seemed to stick.

“It’s where we picked up COLE.”

* * *

Gatt wasn’t able to send him much more than a few files speculating on the Commander’s involvement in the Fereldan Expanse. Like the rest of her files, it seemed to contain a lot of bullshit and only bits and pieces of actual facts. Bull found himself wandering down to the training area to try and puzzle through it all, and found himself drawn to the sound of explosions coming from one of the individual studios.

He’d spent significant amounts of time down here with the boys, letting them get used to being able to use top of the line training sims instead of whatever they could borrow, beg or steal, but he’d never seen Dorian down here before. Bull paused in the doorway to watch, unabashedly admiring the cut of Dorian’s shoulders and slender taper of his hips. 

Dorian noticed him, but finished ripping into a training dummy. There was something beautiful about watching a person destroy an inanimate object with the power of his mind.

“COLE’s not just a really convincing VI then?” Bull asked once Dorian finally turned his attention Bull’s way. 

“You never thought he was,” Dorian replied. “Or else I’ve overestimated you.” He glanced over his shoulder at Bull, as though daring him to argue.

“I feel like there’s a compliment in there, somewhere,” Bull said. 

“I feel as though you’re reading into things.” Dorian adjusted a few settings on the control panel on the wall, and waited as the training area launched a small, quick-moving drone. He took aim at it with small bursts of biotics, little flashes of blue light that snapped out like darts from his fingers. 

“Nice control,” Bull commented. “What implant are you using?”

“I’m starting to wonder about the asinine commentary you’re sending back to the other Qunari,” Dorian answered instead. 

“What makes you think I’m sending anything back?”

“The Commander doesn’t keep secrets from her command crew,” Dorian told him. “Well. Not relevant ones, anyway.” He finally nailed the drone, and it flickered in the air a moment before reforming and speeding up its already unpredictable movements. “You may tell them I am currently using the newly-adapted L36-G, and that it is far superior to its predecessor in every way save the recurring dreams I have about falling.”

“Maybe I was curious on my own,” Bull said. “We don’t use implants.”

“No, as I understand it you have quite a different means of dealing with your biotics.” Dorian whipped a hard wave of energy at the drone and it flew upwards, smashing into the ceiling and then fizzling out. He turned around to face Bull head on, his brow sheened with sweat and an unhappy pinch to the corners of his mouth. “As I have no desire to be fitted with a chip that would rob me of my powers entirely, I think I’ll avoid your fleet.” 

Bull shrugged. “My people don’t get biotics. We went for centuries without any sign of those kinds of powers, and suddenly shit is falling from the sky, we realize there’s life out there besides us and element zero is messing up our biology. It’s a natural reaction, to be afraid and want to control it somehow.”

“I’ve been among people who live in fear of those who are different.” Dorian grabbed a towel hanging from a small hook on the wall and dabbed at his forehead. “Who try to control them. It’s not a pleasant experience.”

“Krem’s told me all about the Tevene Cluster,” Bull said. 

“Believe me when I say he hasn’t told you all of it. And as I have no desire to relive the experience myself, I’ll leave it there.” Dorian slipped by him and left Bull alone in the training area. 

Bull stared at the spot on the ceiling where the drone had blinked out of existence.

* * *

>   
>  Private Terminal  
>  (Email)
> 
> To: Gatt  
>  Subject: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Fw: Report  
>  Status: 26 Failed Send Attempts
> 
> ~~I’ve confirmed that the ship has an unshackled AI. I’m pretty sure it’s the one developed by Dr. Collodi before he was murdered.~~
> 
> ~~Hissrad 6548~~
> 
> I get it, Cole. I won’t try to send the message again. Sorry.
> 
> Bull  
> 


	4. Status: Sent

> Private Terminal  
> (Email)
> 
>  
> 
> To: Gatt  
> Subject: Report  
> Status: Sent  
> Attachments: XO98564, XO74853, XO56874
> 
> Hey Gatt,
> 
> This week’s attachments: 
> 
> 98564 – Initial Alliance assessment on potential colony locations.   
> 74853 – Alliance report speculating on Qunari movements through the Attican Traverse.   
> 56874 – ‘Commander Andraste Shepard 100th Year Memorial Biovid’ – mostly propaganda, but damn. 
> 
> We’ve been chasing leads on the Venatori. Not a whole lot to say. It seems to be a wash-rinse-repeat cycle of find them, shoot them, loot them. I’m becoming a regular on the duty roster for accompanying Cadash, and I’m getting some insight. Shit, but the lady knows her way around a gun. 
> 
> Cadash has been spending a lot of time asking questions. Not fleet questions, but about me and the boys. Apparently she does it with everyone. Can’t say I mind too much. Gives me some insight to her, too.
> 
> For a Turian, Cassandra is surprisingly good company. Good sparring partner, too. And doesn’t put up with too much shit. I like her.
> 
> Finally found out why Sera’s suit is different than Quarry’s. Turns out she’s from the Flotilla—descended from the Quarians who got chased off Rannoch after they refused to settle down and live with the Geth. Needs tons of immuno-boosters and can’t be outside her suit. 
> 
> Dorian Pavus… exceeds expectations. I’ll update more later. 
> 
> Hissrad 6548  
> 


	5. Chapter 5

“Attention crew. We will be making an unscheduled stop to Omega. All non-essential crew are welcome to a full day of paid leave. Essential crew will be welcome to twelve hours leave based on shifts determined by your department head.” Bull could hear cheering from down the hall. He was pretty sure about half of them were coming from his boys.

He tapped his foot on the ground, arms crossed, and shook his head. He didn’t like unscheduled stops. It usually meant that a) there was something wrong with the ship or b) there was something wrong with the crew. Neither sat well with him.

He headed up to the flight deck. 

The old Skyhold models had an interesting design—terrifying, but interesting. The pilot was alone in a small flight deck, separate from the bridge, a large half-sphere protruding from the top of the ship with nothing but combat-rated glass and a flimsy belt between him and the stars.

Holographic projections surrounded Varric on all sides, and Bull eased himself through the projection behind Varric, doing his best to make noise and make sure he wasn’t startled. From what he could tell, Varric always kept his customized 220 Crossbow handcanon resting against the legs of his chair, and he didn’t like thinking that anyone with that sort of firepower on hand might be feeling jumpy.

“Tiny,” Varric said, “What brings you up to my little nest?”

“I wanted to know about this stopover we’re making,” Bull replied. “Wondering if I’ve got time to visit a couple of old friends.”

“Don’t lie to a liar, big guy. You’re wondering why we’re stopping at all and you’re hoping I’ll tell you.” His seat spun around to face Bull head on. “In this case, I’ve got nothing for you. And the kid won’t tell you either, right COLE?”

“The information has been classified as ‘private’ by both Commander Cadash and Dorian,” COLE confirmed. 

“It has something to do with Dorian?”

Varric sighed. “We need to work on your poker face, kid.” 

“I do not have a face, Varric.” Varric opened his mouth to reply. “Ah, you are employing hyperbole.”

“Seriously, though. Let the Commander and Dorian deal with their business on their own,” Varric said. He leaned forward. “Me and some of the other command crew are going to be hitting up Afterlife—Ruffles has an in with the owner. You’re welcome to join us.”

Bull considered it a moment. “Can I bring the boys?”

“Hell, we’ll make it a party.”

‘Party’ covered the first hour. The next four went so far beyond ‘party’ it made the Geth-Quarian conflict look like a petty disagreement. For a while, he thought they’d managed to drink everything in the bar---the way the bartender kept eyeing them, he wouldn’t have been surprised. 

Josephine was shoved up against his side, and kept laughing into his bicep whenever Cassandra made her ‘disappointed’ face—it was almost indistinguishable from her usual face, but according to Josephine’s amused whisper, her fringe turned out whenever she was really out of sorts. Josie’s breath smelled like Noverian Rum and melon, and she smiled at Bull with bright eyes and an unselfconscious flash of too many teeth.

Josie sat in on their briefings, and any observations she made were bound to be the ones aimed at keeping them from stepping on too many toes. The scuttlebutt on the ship was that she was the one to go to if you needed something hard to get. One of the lower deck crewman had suggested she knew the Shadowbroker personally, but even he’d seemed convinced that the rumour was too far-fetched to be real. 

But no matter how nice her smile—or how good she smelled—the one thing everyone seemed to agree on was that The Commander had Josie’s name tattooed on her ass and neither of them were the sharing kind. 

“…and he says to me, ‘that’s not a Hanaar, it’s a jellyfish!’” Varric finished. Bull was pretty sure that the story had stopped making sense about twenty minutes back, but he laughed gamely and finished his drink, enjoying the press of Josie’s mouth to his arm as she giggled helplessly against him.

“Chief,” Krem said from his other side.

Bull shifted, trying not to be obvious, and turned his gaze towards the corner of the bar where Krem was gesturing with his chin.

The Commander and Dorian had finally arrived. 

Dorian looked terrible; his eyes were red—obvious even in club lighting—and his hands were shaking like he was coming down from a bad high. The Commander bullied him onto a stood and waved to the Turian behind the bar. Her hand stayed steady on Dorian’s back, her mouth moving in unintelligible whispers as two long lines of shots were set up in front of them.

“Well,” said Josie, following Bull’s gaze, “That’s not a good sigh.”

Bull kept half an eye on them as they started pounding back shots, one after another with barely a chance to breathe in between. The Commander got increasingly loud, her hand gestures more and more elaborate. Dorian’s shoulders lost their slump somewhere between shots six and seven, and by the eighth he was half-laughing, half-sobbing into his elbow.

“They’ll be fine,” Josie told him, smacking Bull’s thigh to get his attention. “Give them some space.”

Bull reluctantly turned his attention back to the table, where the storytelling mantles had fallen to Blackwall and Sera, who were trying to piece together something resembling a narrative about an Asari they’d both unknowingly pursued at the same time.

About half an hour later, he cast another look over his shoulder. The Commander had Dorian’s cheeks cradled in her hands, and deliberately shouted ‘fuck him’ right in Dorian’s face. Whether it was a suggestion or a dismissal, Bull wasn’t sure, but she was beginning to dance the universal ‘I drank too much too quickly’ samba, and Dorian was barely keeping balance on the stool without her help.

Oh, and one of the biggest damn Krogan Bull had ever seen had sidled up to the bar next to them, and was watching them both with obvious interest.

“Let me out,” Bull said. 

Josie sighed but nodded and shooed Skinner and Sera off the bench to let Bull stand.

Seemingly confident that Dorian wasn’t about to toppled face-first into the bartop, The Commander abandoned him and scurried off in the direction of the toilets. Bull made his way over the bar, probably failing to come across as anything but obvious, and stopped within earshot. 

Oblivious, Dorian grabbed one of the empty shotglasses and tipped it up, his tongue flicking out to catch the last few drops of liquor. Once he was finished fellating the glass, he slammed it back on the bar and turned to the Krogan, obviously sizing him up with an exaggerated tilt of his head.

Bull tensed, fingers itching for the gun he’d been told not to bring.

“You’ll do,” Dorian announced.

Well, that wasn’t exactly what Bull had been expecting. The Krogan, on the other hand, grinned plate-to-plate. 

Not happening.

“My friend is drunk,” Bull said, smoothly inserting himself between the two of them. Dorian sighed and leaned heavily against Bull’s back, his breath hot and wet against Bull’s spine.

The Krogan’s grin didn’t dim. “We could share.”

As much as Bull liked the image, he shook his head. “Maybe once he’s sobered up.”

The Krogan did a head-tossing version of a shrug. “I’m here all week.”

He turned his attention to the Asari on to his right, and Bull slowly turned around back to Dorian, trying not to knock him off his stool in the process.

“’You’ll do’?” Bull repeated. “Damn, Pavus, you’re a charmer when you’re wasted.” Dorian’s face slid across Bull’s chest, coming to stop inches from his nipple. 

“Not a Pavus,” Dorian murmured. The thumping bass overhead almost swallowed the words, but Bull managed to catch them anyway. Dorian pushed away. “Where’d my Krogan go?”

Bull sighed and hoisted Dorian up off his stool, carefully maneuvering him so he didn’t have to move of his own accord but it wasn’t obvious that Bull carried the bulk of his weight.

He waved to the boys and helped Dorian out of the club. They were docked in a port not too far away—he got the feeling Afterlife’s patrons were guys who’d stumbled off their shops and into the closest bottle. Fortunately, it meant it wasn’t a long walk.

“Hey, COLE,” Bull said once they were back on board, “Where’s Dorian’s cabin?”

COLE’s answer was half cut-off by Dorian’s slurred laugh. “I don’t usually go to bed with men I like. Too dangerous.”

“Previous logs indicate that the past four of Dorian’s liaisons have been—”

“COLE, his cabin?” 

“Oh, of course.” 

Bull took the lift up to the officer’s floor, thankfully getting there without any incidents beyond Dorian gracelessly failing to cop a feel.

COLE helpfully opened Dorian’s doors, and Bull helped him inside, unsurprised to find the room decorated in rich reds with dark wood accents. It smelled like his cologne and the wax he used on his moustache, a touch of the faint musky smell Bull associated with human men. Clothes were strewn across the bed, as though he’d tried on the entire contents of his wardrobe before going out, and Bull braced him against a nearby desk so he could toss them all onto the floor. 

Bull tried his best to keep his touch clinical and unaffected as he stripped Dorian of his boots, pants and overly complicated shirt. He eased Dorian down to his bed and started to draw back.

Dorian’s hand snapped out and grabbed hold of Bull’s before he could get too far, placing a kiss to the middle of his palm.

“Glad it’s you,” he mumbled, his eyes closed.

“It’s not me,” Bull said. “Not like this.”

He gently pulled his hand away, taking a selfish moment to brush a stray lock of Dorian’s hair out of his eyes.

Dorian rolled over and buried his face in his pillow, and was already snoring by the time Bull stepped out the door.

Josie was waiting for him, apparently perfectly sober regardless of how many drinks she’d put back over the course of the night.

“I put mine to bed as well,” she said, her face a mask of cultured neutrality.

He wondered if he should be offended. “You checking up on him? Or me?”

Unwavering, Josie raised an eloquent eyebrow. “Both. Augustine won’t tell me what happened—and considering how... chatty she is while intoxicated, it must be quite the confidence. I wanted to make sure if he needed more than one friend around, you had someone close by to call on.”

Bull bit the inside of his cheek. “I’m not sure I’d call us friends.”

“Oh?” Josie crossed her arms. “You’d face down a horny Krogan for anyone?”

“Any one of the crew.”

“Then I’m assigning you to watch Sera next time we go to Thessia. You’ll find your hands full.” She tipped her head. “You two are exceedingly alike. Dorian will also say he doesn’t have any friends. _I_ will say you both underestimate the number of people invested in your well-being.” Her gaze softened. “Good night.”

She made her way back to The Commander’s cabin without another look backwards.

Bull headed down to the lower decks. He doubted any of the Chargers would be back from the bar yet—and if they were, they probably already had company and weren’t interested in more. 

He let himself into his sadly bare and undecorated room and settled onto his bed. 

How would his walls look with something on them?


	6. Status: Unsent

>   
> Private Terminal  
> (Email)
> 
> To: Gatt  
> Subject: Report  
> Status: Unsent  
> Attachments: (none)
> 
> We made an unscheduled stop at Omega. Something to do with Dorian. The rest of the crew got a day’s shore leave. I let Dorian and Cadash have their privacy… some things aren’t Ben-Hassrath business.
> 
> The Chargers joined me and the rest of the Command crew at Afterlife. I think the bar was starting to run out of liquor by the time they kicked them out.
> 
> Dorian looks rough.
> 
> Bull  
> 

  


	7. Chapter 7

The call came in around 0800, when the Commander was still moaning into her breakfast about never drinking again. There was still no sign of Dorian, leaving Bull to wonder if maybe he hadn’t decided to roll over and die rather than cede to the need to get out of bed. Then again, it seemed like everyone was sleeping it off except for Josie, Bull and Cassandra. There were a few crewmen around the commissary, but for the most part it was deserted.

“Commander, there is a message for you from Admiral Ba’Riss marked as urgent.”

She groaned and waved her omni-tool helplessly towards Josephine. 

Josie sighed and hit a few commands on the tool. “Go ahead and put him through here, COLE.”

Bull looked pointedly towards the other empty tables and Josie shook her head, gesturing for him to stay. 

“Augustine,” the words were warm and familiar, even filtered through the breathing apparatus worn by all Rannoch-based Quarians. “I’m unfortunately being forced to send this message through covert means. When we last parted you told me to call on you if I was ever in need of help, and it seems that I need to hold you to that offer. There is dissent on Rannoch, and I fear that we may be moving towards another civil war if we do not have a mediating influence present. While the Council has sent a number of diplomats, their voices are being drowned out by the anger of my people. I ask you to please come and offer what help you can.”

The message ended abruptly, and the Commander lifted her head and stared blearily at her omni-tool.

“Why are they calling me?”

“You left an impression,” Josie replied. 

“I blew up their parliament building.”

“Not all of it.”

“I have no desire to return to Rannoch,” Cassandra said, “But if that weasel Cor’Rhinne is causing trouble again, then perhaps it would be in the best interest of everyone to intercede. Especially if the Council representatives are being ignored.”

“Fuggit,” the Commander groaned. “Someone decide for me.”

Cassandra’s fringe shook crossly. “That is not the way command structure works aboard this ship, or any other.”

“Ugh.” The Commander lifted her head. “COLE, let Varric know we’re heading to Rannoch.” She pushed herself back from the table. “If I’m going to get involved in Quarian politics again, I need more sleep.” She staggered towards the lift, occasionally pausing to brace herself on the tables dotting the room. 

“She’s not a morning person in the best circumstances,” Josie admitted. Bull snorted. “Do you need a briefing on Quarian politics, Bull? I understand there are some people who find their governing structure to be overly byzantine.”

“Nah, I’ve listened to Quarry whine about it often enough that I think I’ve got a handle on it.” Bull stretched out. “Didn’t know the Commander had a hand in it.”

“I think you’ll find _The Inquisitor_ has a hand in a good many things, many of which are strictly speaking none of our business,” Cassandra said. 

Josie nodded in agreement. “I hope she has recovered by the time we arrived. Last time she tried diplomacy while hungover, it did not go well for anyone.”

Because Varric and COLE were a stellar flight crew, they reached Rannoch just in time for the Commander to emerge from her room looking somewhat less like varren shit and more like a sentient being. 

“Is Quarry on good terms with the People's Diet?” she asked Bull, looking for all the world like she wanted to put armour on over the close approximation of dress blues she’d managed to dig up.

“I’m not even sure she’s allowed on Rannoch anymore,” Bull admitted.

“Damn. Well, that leaves you, me, Josie, Cassandra and Dorian.”

“Let’s be honest, Commander,” Dorian said, entering the shuttle bay behind them, “You’re only bringing me along to act as eye candy. Fashionable, delicious eye candy, I must say, but eye candy none the less.” 

Bull turned, and whistled at the sheer, clinging outfit Dorian had pulled on. It was closer to the recent Rannoch styles than Bull had seen in years—a tight-fitting upper body that flared out around his legs, more a robe than a dress. A ridiculous number of buckles and snaps stretched from his navel to his throat, and Bull couldn’t help imagining undoing them all, one by one.

“Looking good,” he said. “I like the skirt.”

Dorian huffed in annoyance, but there was a suspicious warmth in his eyes Bull hadn’t seen before. “It’s a robe, you uncultured swine.” 

Bull’s lips twitched up in a smile.

Dennet took them planetside, and from the shuttle viewscreen Bull got his first good look at Rannoch. A hundred years of settlement had seen a lot of progress. The landbound Quarians had built their housing up through the natural rock formations, giving the place an almost hive-like appearance. The sun reflected off the solar energy collectors they’d used to pave roads and walkways, and unlike places like Thessia and Palaven, the lower atmosphere was clear of skycar traffic.

The shuttle pad was a few miles inland from the shore of a wind-roughened sea, and the light reflecting off the waves was near blinding. A single Quarian and a Geth Prime were waiting for them when they touched down. 

Ba’Riss was tall for a Quarian, with dark skin a few shades lighter than the Commander’s own. Unlike Dorian’s attempt at emulating Quarian fashion, he still wore the suit reminiscent of the Migrant Fleet, though his exposed head and neck were a definite sign that he was Rannoch-born. His cheeks rounded in a smile behind his mask when they stepped out, and he clapped the Commander’s hand tightly between his own. 

“Augustine,” he said, “Good to see you.”

“And you,” the Commander agreed with a grin. “You know Josie and Cassandra. Let me introduce Dorian and Bull, two more recent additions to my crew.”

“Welcome to Rannoch.” He nodded behind him. “This is my associate. It’s the representative for its phalanx in the parliament.” 

“My pleasure,” Augustine said. 

“Thank you, Cadash Augustine. I am made up of over twenty thousand distinct runtimes, each with a unique identifier. I understand my designation is often difficult for organics to remember, and I invite you to refer to me as Embassy.”

“Embassy, then,” the Commander said. She looked between it and Ba’Riss. “What’s the situation?”

“The situation,” announced an officious voice from the edge of the platform, “Is none of your business.” 

“Cor’Rhinne,” Cassandra sniffed. Bull didn’t think it was possible for her posture to become even straighter, but she managed it somehow. 

Cor’Rhinne stepped up onto the landing site, followed by a few armed Quarians at his heels. He was tall for an aging Quarian, and well-muscled. His eyes, though, had a pinched anger around them that robbed his face of any cheer or warmth.

“And you brought the disgraced Spectre, how extraordinary that you think you and your crew belong anywhere near Rannoch, considering your last visit ended with us piecing our government back together.” 

“To be fair, your government was shit,” the Commander replied. 

“Rannoch does not welcome interference from off-world species, especially not those who have been excised from their own fleet,” Cor’Rhinne said. “You can get back on your shuttle and remove yourself from our planet.”

The Commander took a breath through her teeth and let it out slowly, eyeing the commandos behind Cor’Rhinne with a second’s worth of snap analysis. “Nah.” 

Everyone’s guns came out at once, save for the Commanders. Dorian whipped one of Bull’s heavy pistols from his belt, and brought it parallel with Bull’s to hover over the Commander’s head. Bull’s finger twitched on the trigger, waiting for any one of the commandos to breathe wrong in her direction. 

“Enough,” Ba’Riss shouted. “I invited the Commander here on behalf of the People's Diet, Cor’Rhinne. As the Council representative has proven useless and she has an in-depth understanding of our politics, I felt she would be in the best position to offer insight.” His head whipped back towards the Commander. “You want to know the situation? We are coming up on yet another war with the Geth, as certain members of our government believe that their use to us has come to an end and want them to leave Rannoch.”

“Wasn’t this exactly the argument that caused your last civil war?” the Commander demanded. “Not to mention _the entire Morning War_. If you don’t like it, go join the rest of the jerks on the Migrant Fleet, and leave the Geth out of it.” 

“This is our homeworld,” Cor’Rhinne snapped. “We fought for it. Shed blood for it. _Died for it_. And now we want it to ourselves.”

“This is not a matter to be discussed without the supervision of the Diet,” Embassy pointed out. 

“Tell your console to be quiet,” Cor’Rhinne said.

“Do you want me to teach him some manners, Commander?” Bull asked, twisting his face into the best thuggish expression he could manage. A few of the commandos began shifting uncomfortably in place. 

“No, that’s all right, Bull. I’m sure he didn’t mean it.” The Commander eyed Cor’Rhinne with a steely glare. 

“Embassy is correct. We must continue this discussion in front of the assembly,” Ba’Riss said. “Take your men and go. We can continue to discuss this tomorrow when the meetings reconvene.”

Cor’Rhinne eyed the pistols aimed his way, but flicked his hand at his men. They dropped their weapons. He marched off the platform without another word, though Bull kept his pistol in hand until he was well out of sight.

“That’s off to a good start,” the Commander said. She looked Josie’s way. “I think you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

“Yes. Thank you for making my job easier, my love,” Josie said dryly. 

“Come. I have arranged lodgings for all of you in my unit,” Ba’Riss said. “We meet with the assembly early tomorrow.”

There was something in his tone that Bull didn’t like. From the way Dorian’s eyes traced him as he led the way, he probably agreed.

* * *

Ba’Riss’ home was a vast apartment in the upper levels of one of the rock structures, set deep in the mountain to protect it from the harsh sun and keep it cool, likely a challenge midday even with environmental controls. A large balcony looking out over the vast sea let natural light stream in, and the gleaming surfaces within bounced it around until the entire place seemed dappled with sunlight.

The gentle whir of air filters thrummed up when the door closed behind them and Ba’Riss removed his mask. Impressions traced their way across his mouth and chin, but it allowed them to see him smile wearily. 

“I’m afraid I did not tell you everything,” he admitted.

“Creator Ba’Riss has brought alarming reports to our attention,” Embassy agreed. “It suggests that Creator Cor’Rhinne is performing experiments on unconsenting Geth, which is against our laws. Furthermore, several creators have disappeared when investigating these occurrences.” 

“The Diet won’t listen to me. Cor’Rhinne has too many sympathizers among them,” Ba’Riss continued. “But if I can prove our suspicions, he’ll lose any momentum he’s gained. No one wants another war, Commander, and his actions will be seen as treasonous if we can provide evidence. Any sympathy he has will be shouted down. But I can’t let any more of my people die. I know you can handle yourself, you’ve proven that more than once.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Josie muttered.

“Yeah it will,” the Commander agreed with a wide grin. 

“I have the coordinates one of my people sent before she disappeared,” Ba’Riss said, relief relaxing his features and pulling invisible weight away from his shoulders. “Embassy and I hoped Miss Montilyet would join us in front of the Diet tomorrow. Cor’Rhinne will have to be there in order to present his case, and many of his followers should accompany him to provide weight to his arguments. It should leave whatever facilities he has mostly unguarded.”

“And apparently he’s expecting us to crash the meeting,” the Commander said with a smirk, “Well done, Ba’Riss.”

He smiled, obviously pleased. “In the meantime, I can offer you refreshments and hospitality. Please,” he gestured to their surroundings, “Make yourselves at home.”

* * *

“Do you prefer all your conquests sober, or am I a unhappy exception?” Dorian asked later as they prepared for bed.

Bull paused in removing the snaps of his pauldron and turned to regard Dorian with a skeptical eye. “You were out of your mind drunk, Dorian. I’m surprised you remember.” 

“I have an excellent memory, you’ll find,” Dorian said. “An inexcusable sin, more often than not.”

“You remember propositioning a Krogan?” Bull asked.

“…not my finest moment,” Dorian replied. 

“You know you probably would’ve died?”

“Don’t be so dramatic.” Dorian began working the snaps of his robes, slower than was probably strictly in the interest of efficiency, and Bull couldn’t help it as his attention was drawn to the movement of Dorian’s fingers, and the slow exposure of skin. “Well?”

Bull’s gaze snapped up. “What?”

Dorian huffed impatiently. “The offer stands, now that I’m sober.” He finished with the snaps and pushed the robe off, leaving him in a simple undershirt and boxer briefs. Dorian was a delicious package; lean, though with muscles to spare. Bull imagined pinning him to the wall, drawing pleas from him with his mouth and tongue. 

“I thought you didn’t go to bed with men you liked,” Bull said.

Dorian’s gaze filled with that same warmth Bull had seen earlier. “Who said I liked you?” 

“Fair enough.” Bull stepped forward, into Dorian’s space, close enough to feel the rise and fall of his chest as his breathing sped up. Dorian met his eyes, fearless, and gently brushed his fingers across the wiry hair covering Bull’s chest.

“What do you like?” Dorian asked. 

“You tell me,” Bull replied easily. 

Dorian licked his lips in consideration, gaze heated and wanting, and slowly wound his way to his knees, easing Bull’s pants down with him. Bull’s gaze fixed on the bob of his throat as he swallowed, the way his eyes widened and darkened at the sight of Bull’s cock, already half-hard.

Without prompting, Dorian teased the head of Bull’s cock with his lips, brushing against the sensitive slit and generous foreskin, a tease more than anything else. Bull’s hands tightened at his side, but even the minute flex of his fingers drew Dorian’s attention. 

“Those can go in my hair, if you please,” he said.

“Can they now?” Bull threaded his fingers in Dorian’s hair, tracing the soft dusting around his left ear before moving to the thicker, longer strands up top. “You like it rough?”

In place of a response, Dorian licked a stripe up his cock and Bull had to fight down a drawn out groan. It rumbled around in his chest, earning him a pleased hum from Dorian as he opened his mouth and took Bull in. 

He moved with slow, deliberate movements, the careful caress of his mouth and tongue a torturous slide. Bull could feel his hips begin to tilt forward in response, and he fought to stay still. Dorian pulled back until only the tip of Bull’s cock rested against his lower lip, and looked up at him through thick lashes. 

“Yes,” he finally whispered, “I like it rough.” 

Bull’s hand fisted in his hair and he dragged Dorian back onto his cock, Dorian’s moan of approval all he needed to begin canting his hips forward, fucking Dorian’s mouth with more self-restraint than he’d imagined himself capable. Dorian swallowed, taking him deeper, and Bull cursed, wishing he had something to brace himself against. 

When Dorian’s tongue played sinful tricks on the underside of his cock, Bull let a full groan escape his lips, and he tightened his grip on Dorian’s hair even more. 

“Fuck,” he ground out, cupping the back of Dorian’s neck with his other hand to give himself something solid to anchor on. He struggled with the urge to let go, to really let lose himself in the moment and fuck Dorian’s face the way he wanted, and when he realized how close he was to giving in, he reluctantly pulled back.

“What?” Dorian asked, his voice fuck-roughened as his gorgeous mouth. 

“Come on,” Bull said, “Bed.”

Dorian looked aggrieved at the suggestion, as though he’d like nothing more than going back to worshipping Bull’s cock, but agreed with a half-sigh. 

“You didn’t answer me,” he chided, ridding himself of his undershirt and briefs. 

“I just want to make you feel good,” Bull answered.

Dorian glanced over his shoulder. “It is a two way affair, you realize.” 

Bull caught Dorian’s hips and pulled him back, rubbing his cock against the crease in Dorian’s ass until Dorian was squirming and desperately trying to seek out more contact. He leaned down and nipped at the skin between his neck and shoulder, and when Dorian stilled completely he bit down harder to earn himself a toe-curling moan. 

It was easy to tip Dorian into bed, push him into the sheets and straddle his hips, bringing their cocks into close alignment, just shy of offering Dorian real contact to frot against. 

Dorian’s hands twisted in the bedsheets, and Bull murmured, “yeah,” and bound them up further. “Do you like this?”

Dorian tugged on the sheets, eyes widening in surprise when his hands didn’t come free. “Yes,” he panted, arching up into Bull’s hand as he brought his palm to rest inches below Dorian’s navel, his fingers running through the course patch of hair leading down. 

“If you don’t, tell me,” Bull said. “‘Stop,’ ‘red,’ ‘ _katoh_ ,’ are all words I’ve used before. You have a different one?” 

“No,” Dorian hissed, his eyes squeezing shut. 

Bull frowned and drew back and away, lifting his weight off Dorian entirely. Dorian’s eyes snapped open, his face twisted in confused frustration. 

“We should’ve done this before we started,” Bull said. “I want a word.”

“How about ‘infuriating,’” Dorian snapped. Bull waited in silence until Dorian huffed out an annoyed breath. “‘Stop’ will do. Now can we please—?”

Bull sank back down onto him and caught his mouth in a messy kiss. Dorian kissed like he was drowning for it, all desperate tongue and greedy lips, yet sloppy like he hadn’t had much of an opportunity to kiss before. Not entirely inexperienced, but Bull was willing to bet that the reason he didn’t fuck men he liked was to keep it impersonal. He wasn’t sure how to feel, suddenly knowing he was the exception. 

He finally let his hand slide down to Dorian’s cock and wrapped his fingers tight around the base. “I think what you need is someone to take care of you. Really take care of you. I can do that, no problem. I could make you forget there’s anything in the galaxy except for you and me. How does that sound?”

“It sounds like it would take too long,” Dorian snapped, despite the raw desperation in his voice. 

Fuck, he wanted it, Bull could tell. He stroked Dorian’s cock with long, measured passes of his hand, careful to keep the touch firm and drawn out instead of the quick passes Dorian so obviously wanted. 

“ _Kaffas_ , you great reprobate, so help me…” 

Bull gave in, finally giving Dorian exactly what he wanted, reading every minute change in his body language to draw out the small groans and gasps hiding in his throat. His reactions were strongest when Bull inched his hand slowly down Dorian’s shaft and then stroked it quickly back upwards, cupping the head of his cock. Frantic Tevene began pouring from his lips, a combination of curses and demands and promises until Bull gave in and just let Dorian fuck his hand the way he wanted.

When Dorian came, his entire body arched up off the bed, his hands tight in their makeshift bonds and pleading for Bull to take him through it. Bull wanted to sink his teeth into Dorian’s neck, see if he could taste the pleasure coursing through the other man’s veins, and held himself back by the barest hair-thin thread. 

Dorian’s stuttering breaths caught on each small, final twitch of his cock as his climax wound down, and Bull drew his hand back to lick it clean and allow the musky taste of come to stain his lips. 

“You’re fucking gorgeous like this,” Bull told him. 

Dorian’s eyes fluttered open, and he eyed Bull with drowsy satisfaction. “Roll over and I’ll return the courtesy.”

Bull considered the prospect. He was willing to bet the bedsheets couldn’t hold him, but he could always grab the headboard if he thought he was getting to wild. “Wouldn’t say no to you putting that fantastic mouth of yours to good use again.”

Dorian smirked. “My pleasure.”

* * *

Dorian was already gone by the time he woke, though there was still warmth left in the sheets, the impression of his body from sleeping curled up beside Bull all night. Bull stretched—gratified by the warm pull of his muscles that always followed a good work out—and pushed himself up. The air filters had rid the room of the smell of sex, but he could still taste it on his tongue, a bare whiff lingering on his hands and beneath his nose.

It was almost a shame to shower.

When he emerged, everyone else was already gathered around Ba’Riss’ dining table, weapons out and undergoing a pre-mission inspection. Josie, Embassy and Ba’Riss were all unaccounted for.

Bull placed his down as well, and took the open seat next to Cassandra. 

“Where’s Josie?” he asked.

“Off to try and get a few last minute supporters for their case,” Cassandra answered. “In case our investigation proves fruitless.”

The Commander finished reassembling her handcanon. “She’s pretty persuasive. Also hasn’t broken her ties with the Council, which makes her definitely more of a help than me.” She holstered her weapon and turned to the pistol she used in her off hand. “I had Dennet drop off your armour, it’s in the front hallway.”

“Thanks, Commander.” 

They were suited up and ready to go within the hour, and Ba’Riss’ go ahead followed shortly thereafter.

Dennet flew them out to the coordinates, an island far enough out to sea that no one would accidentally reach it by boat, and small enough to be easily ignored if someone flew over it. 

“This is it, Commander,” Dennet said from up front. “Not big enough for me to land, I’m afraid.”

“No worries, Dennet. Stick close, but you can drop us here.” 

The shuttle doors opened and they dropped into the shallow water near the shore. The island wasn’t impressive up close, but even with the smattering of rocks and algae, it was impossible to miss the double doors set into the craggy ground. Or the security turrets that swung around as soon as they emerged from the water.

They opened fire, the powerful shots first pinging off their shields and, as they started to lose integrity, hammering into their armour. Bull and Cadash took a few wild shots, Dorian scrambling with his omni-tool to overload even one of them to give them a break. 

Next to them, Cassandra managed a few decent shots, knocking one of the turrets off its axis and effectively disabling it. Dorian managed to overload another. From there, it was peanuts for the Commander and Bull to take out the other two.

“Nice welcome,” the Commander spat. 

“At least we know there’s something here,” Cassandra said. 

Dorian hopped over to bypass the security, muttering under his breath about Quarian protocols and unfounded paranoia. It finally slid open, revealing a ladder and a steep vertical drop.

The Commander went down first, and when she wasn’t greeted by the sound of gunfire, called the rest of them after her. A maze of thin metal walkways had been dug into the submerged parts of the island, the press of sea water around them making the entire area claustrophobic. Bull followed, his head turned at an angle to accommodate his horns, eyes sharp for anything from turrets to guards.

It eventually opened up into a larger area, the walkway suspended over a cavern with the sea below, a pressure door on the far side. 

“Lovely,” Dorian said. “For all we know, there’s a few million gallons of water on the other side of that door waiting to be let in.”

“Wouldn’t make much sense to lead to a dead end,” Bull pointed out. “Don’t get your skirts in a twist.”

Dorian levelled him with an unamused glare and hopped forward to look at the security system. With a last glance at the Commander, who nodded, he forced the door.

There wasn’t sea water on the other side. 

Bull almost wished there had been.

Pieces of Geth were strewn about the place, some with monitors attached and others discarded like yesterday’s refuse. It looked like a few dozen had been taken apart, each of them mostly deactivated and partly destroyed—whoever had nabbed them wanted to make sure they couldn’t be brought back to testify against them. Heavy pipes ran across the ceiling, thick black metal that added an air of menace to the already grim morgue of machinery.

“I hear Quarians used to do this to Geth before the Reaper War,” Dorian murmured as they made their way through the lab, looking for any sign of life. 

“It was a dark time,” Cassandra whispered.

A whisper of movement pulled Bull’s attention and he whipped his gun to the left, hesitating when he saw a Geth juggernaut pulling itself upwards. 

“Thank the spirits,” Cassandra said, “There may be other survivors as—” 

She was cut off as it opened fire. There was no attempt at communication, nothing save a sudden steady stream of violence. 

Bull grabbed Dorian and pulled him behind a fortunately steady-looking workstation as the juggernaut took aim at his head. 

“We’re allies!” the Commander shouted. “Cease fire.”

It met the declaration with a round from the rocket launcher mounted on its left shoulder.

“It does not understand,” Cassandra shouted from her position, ducked down behind a half-wall nearby. “We must return fire.”

“I don’t want to kill it!” 

“I think at this point it’s it or us,” Dorian replied. He squeezed Bull’s hand—still at rest on his arm—and tried to overload one of its guns. The program failed with a squeal of interrupted tech.

Bull jumped up and shot out the barrel of one of the rocket launchers before it could reload from the ammo pack strapped to its back. The gun’s firing mechanism exploded in sparks, and it dropped uselessly down against the Geth’s chest.

Bull and Cassandra took turns squeezing off as many rounds as they could in the short moments as the juggernaut reloaded its weapons, ultimately not doing much beyond denting its metal carapace and staggering its relentless movements towards them.

“Bull, toss me your gun,” the Commander shouted as her own shorted out.

Bull ducked down and slid his weapon across the floor to her, and the Commander jumped to her feet, aiming at the support pieces holding up one of the heavy black pipes overhead. It broke free with a metallic ping, and the pipe swung down, nailing the juggernaut in the middle of its torso. It stumbled back, and all of them jumped up to fire the remainder of their ammo.

When it was little more than a smoking tangle of metal on the floor, the Commander and Dorian warily crossed the floor towards it. 

“It barely registered us,” the Commander said. 

Dorian dropped down, gingerly opening the compartment housing the juggernaut’s motherboards. He frowned. “This isn’t Geth technology.” He pulled it out. “This is Quarian make. Adapted to fit into Geth ports.” His gaze scoured the other mutilated Geth around them. “Look, the ports on this one have been ripped out.”

“They removed its systems? It’s soul?” 

“And left little more than a mindless gun in place,” Dorian agreed. He pointed back behind the Geth. “Look.”

On the other side of the space, the bodies of a few Quarians had been tossed aside with the same indifference as their Geth allies, and Cassandra gasped as the Commander kneeled beside them to turn one over.

“I know him,” Cassandra said, “He was a candidate for the Spectres. I mentored him for a year before the decision was made to deny the Quarians’ application to join the Council.” 

“He died quick,” the Commander said. “He wasn’t in any pain.” The wounds coincided with the juggernaut’s weaponry. 

“And the rest of them?” Dorian demanded. “What could he have been hoping for, here? Why put anyone through this sort of torture?”

“Whatever his reason,” Cassandra snapped, “It ends now.”

* * *

The People's Diet was still in session when Cassandra all but kicked in the door. Cor’Rhinne was on the floor, weaving whatever bullshit blanket he’d concocted for them. “We built the Geth,” Cor’Rhinne continued, ignoring their approach. “And they have been useful in rebuilding our homeworld. But so have hammers. We do not accord them any special consideration, nor should we the Geth.” 

Cassandra stormed forward before any of the rest of them could, the motherboards Dorian had pulled from the Geth juggernaut clenched tightly in her talons, muscles tensed to the point Bull worried she’d snap them in half. “You!” she called. “How could you?”

“This is not the business of anyone save the Quarian people,” Cor’Rhinne shouted back, his eyes zeroing in on the boards in her hand. “I ask the People's Diet to remove everyone and anything that isn’t Quarian from the premise.” He shot a derisive look to the row of Geth standing at artificial stillness on their side of the room.

Bull could tell which of the officials agreed with him from the subtle movement of eyes and barely-hidden nods. Reading Quarians, it turned out, was as easy as reading anyone else. 

“The Geth belong here,” Ba’Riss said from his place. Josie waited quietly beside him. “And anyone who can speak sense should be a welcome addition instead of forced out. Or have we forgotten how to listen to reason?” 

“Enough,” Cassandra snapped. “This was pulled from a Geth juggernaut, programming it to be nothing more than a weapon. It’s not hard to guess who was responsible.”

The Geth began to shift in place, their heads twitching in unison as they absorbed the information. 

“The Geth and the creators had agreements in place to prevent such actions,” Embassy said, stepping forward from the line of Geth. “We require assurances that this is not a widespread practice of the creators.”

The tension in the room ratcheted up about a thousand times.

“No,” one of the assembly said, her voice strained with barely-concealed contempt as she stared down Cor’Rhinne. “It is not. The People's Diet does not condone any experimentation upon the Geth or other Quarians. When the perpetrators are found, they will be punished to the full extent of our laws.”

“For what? _Putting the machines back to use_?” Cor’Rhinne demanded. 

“How about murder?” Cadash asked. “Sounds like a pretty open and shut case, wouldn’t you agree?” 

Cor’Rhinne spun around. “You interfering _boshtet_!” He waved at the same group of commandos that had accompanied him to the shuttle pad. “I call upon all those loyal to Rannoch to help me! Remove the Geth from our government. Remove the aliens from these proceedings. Take back our homeworld!”

No one moved.

“It seems you are out of friends, Cor’Rhinne,” Cassandra growled. 

Cor’Rhinne went for his gun, but Cassandra was faster. She yanked hers from its holster and opened fire before he could do more than brush the butt of his weapon. Cor’Rhinne stumbled backwards, hitting the desk behind him and crumpling to the ground. Silence followed, save for the whirring of the Geth in their place. 

“This matter is closed,” the same Quarian said quietly. “Let there be no more debate: the Geth are our equals and our allies. Those who disagree are welcome to leave Rannoch to join the Migrant Fleet, where their prejudices will undoubtedly be supported.” 

As the gathering began to disperse, Ba’Riss moved to join them, Embassy not far behind. 

“Thank you,” he said. 

“Don’t thank us,” the Commander replied. “There were too many dead for this to be a victory.”

“We shall travel to the coordinates to retrieve our fallen,” Embassy said. “And those creators who attempted to help us.” 

“We both will,” Ba’Riss assured it. “We are all Geth.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had entirely too much fun thinking up headcanon for the Quarians and Geth post-ME3. You have no idea. 
> 
> ...
> 
> Well, you probably have some idea, lol.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to comment so far - all the positive feedback has been amazing.


	8. Status: Sent

>   
> Private Terminal  
> (Email)
> 
> To: Gatt  
> Subject: Report  
> Status: Sent  
> Attachments: XO77845, XO24601
> 
> Gatt,
> 
> Attachments: 
> 
> 77845 – Alliance file on planets which have been depleted of mining materials. Apparently a lot of them were completely stripped leading up to the Reaper War. There’s some speculation on terraforming to get them back up to natural occurring levels.  
> 24601 – A file on a Hanaar parole-breaker the Spectres are after. Might come through our system – watch out for him. He’s got a Spectre on his tail.
> 
> Not much to report. Went through the Perseus Veil and visited Rannoch. There was some political mumbo-jumbo I didn’t quite follow. I would disagree with the Arishok’s assessment of the Quarians as weak. But I suppose that’s his call.
> 
> Bull

* * *

They hadn’t hung around long after the situation had been resolved, though they’d made sure Ba’Riss and Embassy didn’t need help retrieving their fallen. 

Across the room, Krem shouted for him to join them in the training area and, grateful for the distraction, Bull pushed away from his terminal with a huff of breath, for some reason not all that keen to write much more about the situation on Rannoch. He didn’t want to read too much into his motivations—he had a duty and responsibility to the Qun, after all, and leaving out pertinent details was a definite failure to fulfill them—and letting himself get distracted seemed like a better idea than trying to figure his shit out. 

The Chargers been upgraded from barracks to a suite of rooms connected by a large common area, and Bull had his own room down the corridor, though he still chose to sit with them more often than not. He liked keeping tabs on the boys, and when they weren’t taking up more than their fair share of room in the commissary or monopolizing the group training areas, they tended to stay close. 

Bull followed, dogging Krem’s heels to the lifts, and let himself get swept up in Krem’s recounting of a recent argument he’d had with Skinner on the merits of the recent addition to the Blasto franchise.

The lift opened on the science floor, and Dorian stepped aboard, a small smile flitting across his face when he caught sight of Bull.

“Mr. Aclassi. Bull.” He hit the button for the floor housing the first of the ship’s expansive engineering decks. 

“Dorian,” Bull said, warming his tone with promise. He didn’t think it was his imagination that Dorian shivered a bit.

He could feel Krem scrutinizing them, but his second in command fortunately kept his commentary to himself the rest of the ride to the training area.

“Will I see you later?” Bull asked once Krem stepped out. 

Dorian blinked. “Unless the Commander decides to change up her mission rosters, I imagine we’ll see each other frequently.”

Before Bull could say more, Dorian hit the button for the engineering floor again and Bull had to dart out of the lift before it closed on his shoulder. 

Krem was waiting for him, arms crossed, looking worlds of unimpressed. “Come on, chief. Shoot something. It’ll be good for you.”

He picked one of the longest firing ranges and bullied Bull inside, even though he knew Bull was shit at distance shooting. 

“Chief—” 

“It was only one night,” Bull said quickly. 

“I was going to ask you to activate the target,” Krem said. “Something you want to get off your chest?” 

Bull grumbled and pulled up the first target, only about twenty feet off. Krem glanced at him knowingly and picked it off with a few clean shots, far less dramatic than his usual shooting.

Bull had first met Krem on a shady station in a shadier bar in the Terminus systems, still recovering from surgery and unable to properly fend off the horde of Batarians hassling him for the unforgivable sin of being human. Bull had intervened, lost an eye, gained a second in command, and made possibly the first real friend he’d ever had. While it had turned out for the better—excepting the loss of his eye, but all things considered he’d come out ahead—the whole reason Krem had been on a shitty little station in the Terminus Systems was because he’d used up his credits escaping the Tevene Cluster, and the rest on the surgery and couldn’t afford to get to another human-controlled system where he could have it done in relative safety.

And _why_ had he been forced out of the Tevene Cluster?

“You know, it’s like I told you,” Krem said, spacing his shots to create a crazy fractal pattern on the next target Bull queued up. “The Tevene colonists are bastards. I figured out who I was pretty early on and I knew what I was in for if I stayed, so I got the hell out as soon as I’d saved up the credits.”

“You turned out all right,” Bull pointed out.

“You didn’t know me before,” Krem said. He fired a single shot and blew a hole right in the middle of the target. “And you don’t really know him.”

“He left, too,” Bull said. “He’s here. Helping.”

Krem put down the gun. “Listen, I like Dorian. He’s fun to rile up, and once you’re through the layers of bullshit, he seems like a decent guy. But Minrathous _fucks you up_. You’re born in a box, right? And the lid is closed and the only way out is to chew your way through the side. No one gets out without bits still stuck in their teeth. My Gran said it was that way before the War, and when our Relay went down it got worse.”

Bull hefted his gun and blew the target away completely. “Dorian’s sweet, but Qunari don’t have sex for love. It’s not like you need to warn me off.”

“If you say so,” Krem said, “But you’re the one who brought it up.”

That was when Lace Harding walked into the room and Krem dropped his gun on Bull’s foot.

“Smooth,” Bull grit out through his clenched jaw. Krem scrabbled to pick up his gun and propped it up against the wall—something he could have done _before_ breaking Bull’s fucking toe.

“Shut it,” Krem hissed. He straightened as Harding approached. “Miss Harding.” His mouth twitched and his lips opened once or twice, but thankfully Harding saved them all from whatever awkward follow up he was struggling against.

“Lace, please,” she insisted. “Sorry if I’m interrupting, I didn’t know anyone had this range booked.”

“Oh, we’re just shooting. Targets. For practice,” Krem told her.

Harding followed his line of sight back to the target. Despite the sizable hole Bull had blown in it, there were still signs of the pattern he’d been laying down, and her eyes lit up.

“That’s beautiful,” she said, looking reverent and maybe a little flushed at the spacing and yeah, Bull was done. There a limit to what he needed to know about his boys before he started feeling like an overly invested parent.

Krem blanched. “Uh. It’s all… I mean. We’re done.”

“Oh, no need to leave on my account. I’d be happy to share.” Her eyes widened and she began flailing. “The range. Not… I mean, I don’t take up much space. Because… I am… small.”

These two deserved each other. 

“Well, seeing as I do take up space,” Bull said, “I’ll let Krem get back to showing off.”

Bull let himself out of the range, leaving a huff of laughter in his wake. He thought he knew all of Krem’s moves; after six years, he should’ve. Usually his second was a lot smoother, and had mastered the casual sidle and generous flirtation. Come to think of it, Bull wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Krem blush before. He’d honestly thought the Chargers were all past it—blushing suggested you had a sense of shame.

Bull knew he was reading too much into things; Dorian might not seem like the type to fuck and run, but deliberately misinterpreting Bull’s offer of a follow up sent a pretty strong message. Bull was all about making sure his partners got what they needed, but if what they needed wasn’t what they thought they needed, Bull backed off. It was how things worked. It was how he could justify taking people to bed without Tamrassan permission: fulfill his role, stand steady, obey. Dorian was no different than any other bedmate he’d had over the years.

Bull headed back to the Charger’s common room, happy to let Skinner distract him the second he walked through the door.


	9. Chapter 9

There was something different about this place.

The Venatori labs were all fortified the same way, as far as Bull could tell: a handful of hired muscle, maybe a few turrets if they were unlucky. And inside, no matter how quickly they sliced through the defenses, the data they got was always corrupted. Sometimes, Dorian and Cadash could put together bits and pieces of what was left, but the only real progress they’d made was making sure that there were fewer Venatori at the next stop on their galactic tour.

When they touched down on one of Nausicaa’s moons, braced for the usual violence that greeted them, there was nothing.

“Did the welcoming committee take the day off?” Bull asked, his voice tinny over the comms. He kept his gun at the ready, and everyone tensed in case they decided to answer his question.

Still nothing.

“Keep your guns out,” The Commander ordered. “Dorian and I are going to get the door open.” They bounded towards the door—gravity and atmosphere were both negligible, because apparently the Venatori really liked setting up on tiny little shitholes that no one else wanted. Bull and Sera followed at a distance, scanning the horizon for any sign of ambush. Not that there was much chance of one; everything was flat and featureless. Besides the raised complex, the only other thing in sight was the landing pad. They’d be able to see anyone approaching for miles off.

Dorian hacked the door’s security easily, and ushered them all into the airlock inside. They all braced again for another attack, but the only thing to greet them was the hiss of oxygen and artificial atmosphere flooding the area.

Cadash pulled off her helmet as soon as the environment was stabilized. “I don’t like this.”

“Don’t jinx it, Gussie. We might've just had a bit a luck,” Sera muttered. She didn’t sound like she believed it herself, and clutched her gun closer like a security blanket.

They moved forward carefully, taking steps in inches as though they were creeping around a sleeping thresher maw. The complex seemed deserted; it was a clean environment—it wasn’t like there was dust everywhere—but it had the empty feel that always seemed to permeate the walls whenever a place hadn’t seen life in a while.

Unlike the other places, too, they hadn’t cleaned house. The consoles were all in working order, though Dorian sniffed in disdain over their firewalls.

“Everything is blocked,” he said, “Intact, I think, but I can’t access it from here. We’ll need to find the main server.”

They made their way through a few labs—devoid of Reaper tech, thank fuck, but ominous in the stillness—until they found what Dorian was looking for. They’d built the main server into the communication console; one of the fancy new versions that allowed a flawless 3D projection of whoever you were speaking with, along with VR enhancements in case you needed to do physical work on the other side of the line.

“There’s a file here with your name on it, Commander,” Dorian said after a moment’s pause.

Cadash sniffed. “Of course there is. Play it.”

Dorian gamely threw it onto the main screen, though his attention was still fixed on the console.

“Commander.” Alexius—Bull had seen enough pictures of him that he recognized the face, though none of them had caught the exhaustion around the eyes. “I knew you would eventually come here. You’ve been ruthlessly efficient in destroying all our other facilities. There’s a certain hound dog quality to you I admire.” Cadash looked like she wanted to respond, but remembered at the last moment that she would’ve been yelling at a recording. “I had this facility, as well as several others, evacuated to save us the trouble of training up new manpower, seeing as all our men have been little more than target practice for you and your goons.”

“He’s stalling,” Cadash said.

“What for? There’s no one here,” Sera replied.

Dorian worked furiously on his omni-tool, brow pensively drawn as he reviewed whatever information he was pulling up.

“There’s something…” he murmured.

“It wasn’t until you interfered with operations on Matumaini that you really drew Corypheus’ attention, but now that you have, I’m afraid we can no longer broker your interference.” Alexius’ eyes narrowed.

“Corypheus,” Cadash repeated, her voice little more than a whisper. 

Dorian began, “Commander—”

“Dorian,” Alexius interrupted. Dorian’s head snapped up. “If you’re there, I want you to know I’m not disappointed in you. You’ve done exactly what I would have expected. You… make me very proud.” Dorian’s brow furrowed. “I know you’ve been in touch with Felix. I intercepted his last message. He’s sick, Dorian. Far sicker than he’s led you to believe. And the physiological advances of our research _will_ save him. You have to understand that if it wasn’t for Felix—” He paused and seemed to take a steadying breath. “Regardless. This is goodbye.”

The console went dark.

Above them, something started to beep.

“Shit,” Bull muttered.

“Everyone out!”

The twisting corridors of the facility—previously intimidating in their emptiness—were a lot more intimidating with the steady beep following them towards the airlock. Cadash shouted for everyone to get their helmets on, and Bull’s was barely over his horns before she was tossing a grenade into the airlock and blowing it wide open.

The Commander and Sera had enough protective covering to guard against the worst of the fire. At the last moment, he realized Dorian was still wearing his ridiculously tight bodysuit, and there weren’t any indications of the standard heatproofing upgrades with which Bull had equipped the Chargers.

The suck of equalization pulled them out moments before the first explosion rocked the facility. Bull grabbed hold of Dorian and tucked him in close to his chest, baring his back to the sudden firestorm following them out.

There was enough air on the moon to send the fire rocketing out around them, terrifying in its intensity—how much of this goddamn moon was hydrogen? Bull felt his armour heating under the onslaught, even tucked as he was around Dorian. The fire burned intense and quick, and he could feel his skin blistering despite the protective layers between him and the explosion.

Once the fire died away, Bull slowly rose out of the crouch, wincing as the burns bubbled beneath his skin.

He grit his teeth, the word “fuck” punching out despite his clenched jaw.

“Bull,” Dorian murmured. Bull couldn’t see anything under his helmet, but he wasn’t moving as though he was injured. Small mercies.

“Well, that’s going to be a trip to medical,” The Commander growled. “Fucking Venatori. Dorian! Tell me you got something useful out before everything went kablooey.”

“I got something,” Dorian said. “I think it was obvious Alexius was expecting us to be distracted by his little send off. Everything I retrieved seems to be encrypted, but I have a program or two that should be sufficient.”

“Good. Get on it. Bull?”

“Yeah, Boss?”

“You’re on your way to medical as well.”

“Dumbasses,” Sera snorted. “Fancypants told you that the new mod was available for your gear. I’m going to tell her you ignored her email. See how much she likes that.”

“Please don’t,” The Commander said, sounding pained. “Josie’s going to be pissed enough already.”

Sera sniffed. “Not like she ain’t gonna know. What, you’re going to try to get into medical without her noticing? Good luck with that.”

“Call the damn shuttle, Commander,” Dorian snapped.

Sera and The Commander kept their sniping the entire way back up top, but Bull’s attention kept rounding back to Dorian, whose gaze was fixed on his omni-tool, yet also somehow a Relay jump away. Bull expected him to rabbit as soon as they got back to _The Inquisitor_ , but he dogged their heels all the way to medical.

The Commander waved the doctor off, obviously bracing herself for Josephine to swoop in and give her the tongue-lashing Sera had promised. He was willing to bet the burns were less painful.

Dr. Giselle turned her attention on Bull instead, carefully removing his armour to survey the damage done to his back. Bull clenched his jaw through the pain of his under-armour getting picked out of the blisters covering his skin, finally breathing a bit easier once it had all been pulled away and the burns were fully exposed. Behind him, Dorian took in a sharp breath.

"Good thing Qunari epidermis composition is similar to human," the doc said, "Or else you’d be boasting a whole new set of scars to go with the collection.”

“Damn,” Bull replied, forcing a laugh into his voice to break the trembling tension emanating from Dorian’s corner of the room. “Can you work around the rest of them? I’d hate anyone to think I was soft.”

At some point between the hideous itching of the dermal regen and Josephine showing up to tell the Commander exactly what she thought about the email about gear mods currently sitting unread in her inbox, Dorian disappeared.

Boasting a brand new back, Bull went to check in with the Chargers and send a quick email to Gatt about the destroyed base. He debated seeking Dorian out, but eventually decided to set himself up somewhere and wait. Dorian was the kind of guy who needed to work through whatever was going on in his head; at least, until he trusted you enough to want to work through it together.

Sure enough, late the next day, COLE’s voice chimed in his cabin. “The Iridium Bull, Dorian is asking for your whereabouts. His heart rate is currently above the human average, and his voice inflection suggests he is in distress, though I cannot find anything medically wrong.” There was a brief pause. “Dorian has requested I not share any additional details about his physiology at this time. I am currently communicating to him that I am attempting to offer assistance.”

“Send him my way, kid,” Bull replied.

“Dorian is currently outside your door. Shall I allow him access?”

“Yeah. Do it.”

His door slid open, in time for Dorian to finish, “Certain things should be _private_ COLE. My state of distress is not something to be communicated over an open forum.” He came up short when he saw Bull watching him. His chin tilted up.

“Come on in,” Bull said, leaning back in his chair and spreading his legs just enough to make the invitation twofold.

The door closed behind Dorian with the sort of finality that echoed through the room.

Dorian stared at him, seemingly at a loss for words until he finally managed to break his own silence, “May I see?”

Bull stood from his desk and turned around, allowing him a glimpse at the broad expanse of his back. He heard Dorian crossing to him, but remained still right up until the cool pads of his fingers brushed across Bull’s back.

“There’s still some itchy patches in hard to reach places,” Bull confided. “The doc says it’s all psychosomatic, but what does she know?”

“Indeed. Seems they’ll let anyone be a physician these days,” Dorian snarked. His fingers brushed up against one of the spots and Bull sighed in relief. Dorian gamely ran his fingernails across the skin.

Bull groaned. “Ah, yeah. Right there.”

Dorian’s fingers stumbled across a too-smooth groove—right where the seam between his helmet and his armour started, where the burn had dug down right into the bone—and his hand snapped back to his side. Bull turned around. A slow-banked fury blazed behind his eyes. He must’ve been thinking about this for a while. “You could have been killed!”

“I wasn’t,” Bull shrugged.

That wasn’t what Dorian wanted to hear, obviously. He growled—and, wow, he already thought Dorian was sex in space before the sound sent a thrill of arousal shooting straight to his dick—and shoved Bull’s chest. “I don’t want you getting hurt for me. I don’t want _anyone_ getting hurt for me. And I don’t—” He broke off. “I don’t understand _why_.”

“I thought it was pretty obvious.”

Dorian growled again and clenched his fists. “How could… You aren’t… I’m…”

Bull cupped his face and kissed him. It was like touching a live wire; Dorian surged up against him, too many teeth, sharp and angry as he vibrated against Bull’s chest. He tasted fresh and angry and perfect.

When he pulled away, he went to shove Bull again before his hands fell to his side. He took a deep breath, composing himself as best he could despite the kiss-redness of his lips. “Inane flirtations and a one night stand are somewhat different than allowing yourself to come to harm because you feel I’m too weak to defend myself.” His voice was shaking.

“That’s not what this was,” Bull said. Dorian cocked an eyebrow. “It was about need. Your skimpy little wetsuit doesn’t have the same upgrades mine does. You think this was bad? You ever seen someone with all their skin burned off? I have. It’s like a nightmare. And I wouldn’t let it happen to anyone on the team.”

Muddled emotions darted through Dorian’s gaze, but he seemed to settle on a mix of relief and disappointment. “Well. Good. Of course, you’ve become a valuable member of the crew, though I’d hate to stroke your ego with too many platitudes.”

He seemed prepared to leave it at that. And what the hell—Bull had never been a fan of this much dancing. He caught Dorian’s wrist and pulled him closer.

“Maybe I’d like to be stroked,” he murmured.

Dorian made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. He’d been spending far too much time around Cassandra. “I’m sure there are a number of parties aboard who’d be happy to help you with that.”

“I ain’t asking them.” A flush rose in Dorian’s face; it wasn’t the first he’d seen, but somehow it was the prettiest. “Want another ride?”

“You’re disgusting,” Dorian sniffed.

“Yeah,” Bull agreed.

“I can’t believe I…” Dorian shook his head. “COLE, please set Bull’s privacy settings to maximum, and halt active monitoring in his quarters.”

“The Iridium Bull, do I have your authorization?” COLE asked.

“Sure, COLE. Whatever he wants.”

There was a soft chime and Dorian was suddenly in his arms again. He muttered, “stupid, stupid, stupid,” in the breaths between kisses, right up until Bull swallowed the words. He gripped Dorian under the thighs and hiked him up, bringing their groins in contact even as he bit sloppy kisses into Dorian’s mouth.

“Never again,” Dorian demanded.

“Not gonna promise that,” Bull returned, carrying him towards the oversized bed taking up a generous corner of his room.

“You will,” Dorian said, pulling away.

“I’m not gonna stop protecting you,” Bull insisted.

Dorian’s gaze lingered on Bull’s cybernetic eye for half of a heartbeat, before kissing him again. “As long as I can repay the favour,” he finally acceded.

Bull grinned. “Gotta say, watching you tear through Venatori... Mmm. Never thought anyone could make biotics that hot.”

“I am exceptional,” Dorian agreed.

Then they were kissing again. And that…

That was good.


	10. Chapter 10

>   
> Private Terminal  
> (Email)
> 
>  
> 
> To: Gatt  
> Subject: (none)   
> Status: Unsent  
> Attachments: (none)
> 
> Do you ever wonder
> 
> I mean

* * *

Bull was pleasantly surprised by the feeling of a body in bed beside him as he slowly blinked into awareness that morning. He’d expected Dorian to disappear during the night. Not that he seemed like the ‘fuck and run’ type—pretty much the opposite, actually—but whatever had sent him running the first time wasn’t something Bull anticipated him easily getting over. 

Dorian’s face was mashed into the mattress—pillow and horns didn’t mix—and he’d swung one of his legs up onto Bull’s somewhere during the night, leaving his toes pressed into Bull’s kneecap. It was... nice.

Dorian’s moustache was fluffy when ungroomed.

Bull traced his fingers down Dorian’s back, following the gentle curve of his spine until it met his ass, and brought his palm to rest in the small of his back. Dorian snuffled into the mattress a moment before turning his head and eyeing Bull through a sleep-softened gaze.

“I’m glad you stayed,” Bull murmured.

“You’re very warm,” Dorian replied. Bull kissed his shoulder and Dorian hummed happily. “Perhaps I’m ready for another round.”

“Three doesn’t seem like much of a record,” Bull agreed. He slid the hand on Dorian’s back down further to palm his ass. A small squeeze and Dorian was breaking into goosebumps. “You figure we could go for five?”

“Not without breakfast,” Dorian said, “But four seems like a good short term goal.”

Bull grinned and kissed him again, licking the taste of sleep from his mouth until Dorian was half-hard against him. His hand had only begun the tantalizing trail across Dorian’s ass when an overhead chime froze them both in place.

“Dorian, I have completed decrypting the files retrieved from the Venatori lab yesterday based on the parameters you’ve provided. The Commander is wondering when you will be able to go through a debrief with her.”

Dorian sighed against Bull’s cheek. “I don’t suppose she’d be willing to wait an hour?”

“If I advise her of extenuating circumstances—”

“I’d rather you not broadcast the details of my affairs shipwide, COLE,” Dorian said. He quickly met Bull’s gaze, and the corner of his mouth quirked upwards. “I’m confident that The Iridium Bull can handle that sort of communiqué all on his own.”

“The Iridium Bull, logs of previous encounters with sexual partners indicate that Dorian would experience a severe fluctuation in norepinephrine levels should the liaison be made public.”

“COLE,” Dorian snapped. He took a steadying breath and clenched and unclenched his fists a few times. “Thank you for your concern over my well-being, COLE. In the future, perhaps you could do me the great favour of allowing me to communicate my feelings by myself.”

“Certainly, Dorian. I am sorry if I was not helpful.”

“I’m sure you are. Please tell the Commander I’ll be with her in fifteen minutes.” COLE chimed off and Dorian sighed, pushing away from Bull and rolling off the bed to his feet. “Should give me time for a shower, at least.”

“You know,” Bull said, “I can be discrete.”

“I wasn’t aware you knew the meaning of the word,” Dorian replied flippantly, his entire focus on the clothes they’d left strewn across the floor next to the bed. He pulled on his bodysuit and clipped on his omni-tool. “This was fun, Bull. Thank you.”

Before Bull could respond, Dorian disappeared out the door. Bull remained in bed, staring at where he’d been standing. He’d given Dorian what he’d needed. Or, at least, he thought he had. It was hard to tell with him. That he’d stayed the night… that was something Bull hadn’t figured on. Maybe it was time to re-evaluate.

He stood and his toes caught in Dorian’s thong, left discarded on the floor.

Bull smiled.

* * *

Dorian could work a lot of magic in fifteen minutes.

When Bull joined them in the briefing room, Dorian looked well put-together and unflappable, his moustache no longer poofy and adorably unkempt. But there was no mistaking the brief, heated glance he passed Bull’s way.

Judging from the twitching of the Commander ’s lips, she hadn’t mistaken it either. Bull took the seat next to Dorian and spread his legs a bit. Immature, he knew, but then again amazingly satisfying.

“As I was saying before Bull decided to stake his territory,” Dorian continued with an annoyed moue, “The files we found are useless without context; fragments that refer to different projects and Ventori members. They have quite the club. What I found interesting was that a number of the files have conversion codes, which says to mean they’ve been copied from another system and converted onto the Venatori database. All of those files specifically reference something called _vir’abelasan_.”

“ _Vir’abelasan_ is an Asari word,” Vivienne said. 

“What does it mean?” the Commander asked. 

“‘Well of Sorrows.’“ Vivienne frowned. “There’s an old saying on Thessia, my dear. ‘When the bandol run amok, the world will drown in a well of sorrows.’“ Her eyes narrowed slightly.

“Never heard of a ‘bandol,’” Blackwall muttered. 

“It’s a primate-like species, quite like the pyjack. Known for being entirely unsusceptible to domestication.” Vivienne’s eyes grew troubled. 

“I’m going to bash my head against this fucking table we don’t figure this out,” the Commander growled. 

“Well, it’s not as though the Venatori are conveniently putting up a sign that says ‘here we are, come stop us,’” Bull pointed out. 

Cadash’s eyes narrowed. “Actually, that’s exactly what they’re doing.” She fixed her attention on Dorian. “You said these files were copies. Would details about the originals pre-conversion still be in background coding somewhere?” Dorian nodded. “Get me the coding. There’s no way the Venatori would’ve used an Asari word for any of their projects. They have to have stolen some of it. And I’m willing to bet we can find them if we follow the creation tags on the files.”

“I will run the necessary diagnostics right away, Commander,” COLE said. “Varric is standing by to change our course once these are complete.” Less than a minute later, COLE continued. “It appears that these files were indeed created by an Asari scientist operating on Thessia. The last file was updated less than a month ago. Varric is already plotting the Mass Relay jump.”

“Fantastic.” The Commander bared her teeth in a savage grin. “Let me know when we’re in shuttle range.”

“Will do, Commander.”

“Everyone else dismissed.” Her grin turned a bit less savage and a bit more playful. “Dorian. Bull. It should be another hour.”

She shooed everyone else out of the room, and Bull eyed the briefing table speculatively.

“No,” Dorian said immediately.

Bull definitely didn’t pout. “Why not?”

“Because we have to work in here. I couldn’t possibly sit at this table day after day and conduct civil conversations if I’m continually bombarded with memories of being debauched upon it.”

Bull turned his chair to face Dorian, and spread his legs further apart. He could tell Dorian put a lot of effort into _not_ eyeing his crotch, but fortunately for both of them the efforts were futile.

“If you don’t want to fuck on the table, these chairs seem pretty sturdy.”

Huh. He hoped COLE could get him a picture of Dorian’s spectacular blush. He wanted to savour the image for a long time.

“You’re horrible,” Dorian said.

“Yeah. Completely awful,” Bull agreed.

“Irredeemably disgusting,” Dorian slid off his chair and into Bull’s lap, straddling his thighs like he belonged there.

“The worst.”

“Can’t imagine there ever being a more reprehensible example of moral decline.”

Bull tangled his fingers in hair at Dorian’s nape and pulled him close. “You like it,” he whispered against Dorian’s mouth.

“Stars help me. I do.” He nipped Bull’s lower lip and followed it with a kiss, slow and proprietary. “But I’m still not having sex with you on the briefing table.”

Bull grabbed Dorian’s hips, squeezing just shy of bruising—the way that had made Dorian gasp and squirm the night before. The results were satisfying; Dorian surged in his hold, bringing their groins into close contact. He shuddered and whined against Bull’s lips, looping an arm around Bull’s neck and trying to pull himself even closer. They ground against each other, the whisper of cloth on skin swallowed by the sweet little sounds catching in the back of Dorian’s throat.

“The Iridium Bull, Dorian, please be aware that the Commander has enabled the audio-visual recording function for the briefing room. When I advised her of my responsibility to tell you, she asked me to communicate the message that if you were both prepared to be completely shameless in a public place, she and Lady Montilyet would be equally shameless in happily benefiting from it.”

“I like the idea of putting on a floor show for the ladies,” Bull said with a grin.

“Disgusting,” Dorian repeated. He stood, although there was nothing left up to the imagination under the tight cut of his pants. “COLE, please convey to the Commander that I find her likewise repulsive and had I wanted to be in amateur pornography I would have taken it up during my younger years on the Citadel.” He fixed Bull with a smouldering look. “I’ll be in my cabin.”

Bull was up out of his chair before Dorian was out the door.

After all, it was a long way to Dorian’s cabin. Lots of opportunities to be disgusting, as long as COLE didn’t tattle on them.

* * *

An hour later, Dorian was sporting a lovely bruise on the side of his neck that the Commander kept poking at on their way down to Thessia. No matter how many times he slapped her hand away, she circled to it again and again, her face a mask of joyous amusement.

“One more time and I will throw you bodily out the airlock,” Dorian warned her.

“You wouldn’t,” the Commander laughed, trying and failing to sound serious when she added, “I’m your superior officer.”

“You were kicked out of the Alliance military. You’re no more an officer than I am.”

”You know, I never got that story,” Bull mused.

“You need to get her wicked fucking trashed before she’ll tell that story,” Sera said with a laugh.

“It wasn’t my finest moment,” the Commander agreed. “I really need to lay off the ryncol.”

“I haven’t heard it either,” Dorian said. “Though having seen you after a drink or two, I can only speculate.” He grinned lopsidedly. “She gets handsy.”

Bullshit. That might be the story, but there was no way that if it was something as simple as the Commander getting wasted and groping Councillor Justinia that the files would be sealed. BH Command had been trying to get in for years—since the announcement had been made about her being stripped of rank. He knew a few of the crew had been involved: Solas, Cassandra, probably Varric if the rumours about another Dwarf being on scene were accurate. If they’d all agreed to keep things quiet, though, it was going to take more than gentle probing to get the real story out.

From the look in the Commander ’s eye, she knew what he was thinking.

Thessia was beautiful. Bull hadn’t gotten the chance to spend much time planetside; Qunari were welcome on Thessia, technically, but the Arishok considered the Asari the race least likely to submit to the Qun and they didn’t like wasting time on a losing short game. His trips to the planet had all been business related, with the Chargers, and as a rule they only overstayed their welcome when there was profit involved.

“Commander, the Thessian resident registry indicates that Dr. Neera is leasing an apartment in a small complex about an hour away from our docking port,” COLE reported. “I have arranged a skycar for your transport there and uploaded the address to your omni-tool.”

“Thanks, COLE,” the Commander replied. The shuttle came to a smooth stop and she gestured the rest of them off.

Thessia smelled like the seas of Par Vollen; fresh and clean, even with the towering architecture and press of numerous residents. But despite the majesty of the architecture and the raw beauty the Asari prized as part of an almost-natural aesthetic, there was tragedy barely concealed beneath the surface. The Reapers had done a number on it—not so much as Earth, or even Palaven but the scars were still there if you looked for them. A century wasn’t a long time for the Asari—a lifetime for a human, or Qunari, but for them? Many Asari had known Thessia before the War, and now saw reminders of it every day in simple things such as a new building where an old one had once stood.

Must be hard to live forever.

Skycars on Thessia were even smaller than the ones on the Citadel, and he stared at the compact little vehicle in despair.

“I’m not going to fit,” he said.

“That’s not what you said last night,” Dorian muttered behind him. The Commander choked a bit, and Bull threw a toothy grin over his shoulder. Playful Dorian? Best Dorian.

“Lean your head out the window,” the Commander offered. “If Sera doesn’t drive there’s less of a chance of running into a building.”

Sera made an obscene gesture and jumped into the driver’s seat anyway. Bull huffed out a sigh and looked pleadingly at Dorian.

“What? Surely you don’t want me to strap you to the roof?” Dorian scoffed.

“You’d both fit in the back if we put the seats down,” the Commander said.

“ _You_ two would fit even better,” Dorian pointed out.

The Commander shrugged. “Privileges of rank. I get shotgun. Hop to it.”

Dorian groaned and reached into the back to lower the seats, then stepped back to allow Bull to slide in past him and lie down on the floor of the car. He shifted around a bit, finding a comfortable position for his horns, until he finally found something that resembled comfortable in the way that Elcor poetry resembled Shakespeare.

“Come on, honey. Cuddle up,” Bull said, opening his arms.

“I hate you,” Dorian said to the Commander. She grinned cheekily and clapped him on the back as he climbed in, shoving closely up against Bull as she shut the door behind them.

“Everyone hold on. Sera’s a terrible diver.”

“Stuff it,” Sera said. The car lurched forward, leaving Bull’s stomach behind as she shot out into open traffic.

By the time they reached Dr. Nerra’s residence, Bull was about ready to convert to a religion that guaranteed a peaceful afterlife.

“Never again,” Dorian said as he stumbled out of the car, looking woozy. “Next time, I’m driving. You snuggle with the Qunari.”

“You loved it,” Sera protested. She looked around. “Are you sure this is it, Gussie? Everything’s…”

Yeah. Everything was. Whatever this had been once, the complex of buildings was a ruined shell; as though Thessia had conveniently overlooked them during the repairs done after the War. The walls on some of them were crumbling, the once pristine sides little more than rubble held together by their own nostalgia. Burn marks and signs of gunfire pockmarked the area, Dr. Nerra’s was right in the middle, held up only by virtue of the houses to either side not having fallen over yet.

“Should we knock?” Dorian asked.

The Commander shouldered by him and hit the chime next to the door. They waited uneasily. There was a feeling on old battlefields, like memories trying to physically reassert themselves and become real again. You could always feel the dead.

“No one’s home,” Dorian said. “Bull.”

Bull kicked in the door.

“I was going to say ‘move aside’ to let me get to the console, you savage.” He was trying not to laugh, Bull could tell.

He ducked through the too-small doorframe and took a look around the room.

The warzone had followed Dr. Nerra inside. Tables and chairs were overturned, though they seemed to be in better shape than the building they were housed in. The computer monitors lining the far wall were all cracked. And right in the middle of the place was Dr. Nerra. Or what was left of her, anyway.

“She’s probably been dead a month,” the Commander muttered. “Dorian? Any chance of getting info off her network?”

“I’ll try my best.”

He went to do his thing, leaving Bull and Sera to poke around. It was pretty obvious no one had been inside since her death; the kitchen was full of rotten food, and no effort had been made to clear up the ransacking.

“Think it was the Venatori?” Bull asked.

“It would make sense. They had her research,” the Commander murmured. “But they had to have had it for more than a month. We’ve been chasing them for half a year, at least.”

“Commander, all I found on the system was the remains of a personal diary. Everything else has been scrapped.”

The Commander turned. “Play it.”

“There are entries going back to before the Reaper War. I’m not sure how germane they’ll be to the situation.”

“Play the last ten, then. If there’s anything in there that can help, I want to know.”

Dorian nodded and pulled it up on the screen.

Dr. Nerra was lovely, and yet she seemed completely dragged down by exhaustion. No surprise; the entry date was only about a week after the end of the War.

“My mother. All my sisters. My friends, lovers, neighbours… all dead. All of them. I’ve attended so many remembrance ceremonies I can barely remember which was which. I… I can’t…” The recording ended abruptly.

“This is gonna suck,” the Commander said. “Play them all, Dorian.”

He nodded mutely and pulled up the rest.

“My beautiful Thessia in ruins. Temples destroyed. Homes ruined. I walked through the garden Tish and I used to visit in the spring. There were still bodies half-buried in the rubble. I sent a message to the authorities to have something done about it.”

“I heard back from the authorities today. They said there wasn’t anything they could do about the… the mess. The clean-up resources are all currently on Earth helping the human efforts. I suppose I can understand. Earth was nearly obliterated. Still, I shudder to imagine Thessia remaining in such ruin for long. Perhaps I’ll speak with some of my neighbours. Find if there’s anyone willing to volunteer their time to help me.”

“Bellona is alive! Thank the Goddess. I received a message from her today. Nehuala had some damage done to the atmosphere, and the gasses are having a negative reaction on their communication relays, but she got a message through. I haven’t seen her since she was a child, but she looks wonderful. Exactly like her mother, now that she’s a bit older. She’s working on research to find out the impact the damage to Nehuala’s natural gasses will have on her colony, but she sounds optimistic. There is hope left alive in the galaxy. The Reapers couldn’t destroy it all.”

“They’ve started repairs on the Relays. Thank the Goddess. With FTL travel it would take me longer than my lifetime to reach Bellona. But now… I can’t wait to see her again. She’s all I have left.”

The doctor’s face was twisted in sorrow. “They’ve told us the Relays in non-essential systems will be the last to be repaired.” She breathed in wetly. “I’ll have to wait a bit longer to see Bellona.”

“Thessia’s Relay is finally fixed! And I hear they’ve moved the Citadel back to the Serpent Nebula. Repairs have gone better than expected, and while it will take years to return the Citadel to its former glory, it is at least looking as though it will be habitable again, eventually. I’m so relieved. It’s such an important piece of history to us. I met with a human in the market today who was with the repair crew to work on our Relay. He told me they were expecting to start on the smaller systems soon.”

“I spoke to Bellona today.” She said the words as if they were being punched from her lungs. “The damage done to the gasses on Nehuala was worse than they thought. Everyone on the colony has damage to their lungs, and it’s getting worse. I’ve sent word to the committee coordinating the repairs with a request to have theirs fixed immediately.”

The next entry started with her face twisted in anger. “Apparently, regardless that half the population is dying, the Silean Nebula Relay is still considered a low priority for repairs. _Apparently_ the repair crews are majority human and they want to get to their colonies before the rest of us. How dare they?! As if they were the only ones to suffer. How can they think their lives are more important than Asari ones? Those arrogant little bandol. I won’t stand for this. I’ll take it to the Council if I have to.”

She bent over the terminal, hiding her face, though her body language screamed pain. “Bellona is dead.” She took a breath and slowly straightened. She’d aged centuries since her last entry, even though the date was less than year after the last one. “She drowned in her own blood when the walls of her lungs gave away. They estimate the deterioration might have been stopped all together if we’d gotten her off planet.” Her face twisted in rage, tears pouring from her eyes even as she grit words out through her clenched jaw. “This is all their fault. _Humans_. Their selfishness killed the last person in the galaxy I ever loved. Everyone said Reapers were the danger, but now I know better. It was never the Reapers. It was always _them_.”

“Shit,” the Commander whispered.

The next entry, she was offputtingly calm. There was nothing in her eyes; Bull had seen more expressive corpses. “I’ve found a Salarian scientist who agrees with both my philosophies and will complement the methods I’ve detailed in my work journals. Livius Erimond. He was recommended by a third party who preferred to remain anonymous. I’m going to meet with him to discuss our next steps. _Eleth bandol mirin dak vir’abelasan_.”

“At least we have a name,” the Commander whispered, sounding choked. “Let’s head back to _The Inquisitor_. See what COLE can find out. Maybe…” She took a steadying breath.

“Let the ghosts have this place,” Bull said.

The Commander nodded, and clapped his shoulder on the way out the door.


	11. Status: Sent

>   
> Private Terminal  
> (Email)
> 
> To: Gatt  
> Subject: Report   
> Status: Sent  
> Attachments: XO84975, XO15483
> 
> Gatt,
> 
> I received your communiqué regarding _The Inquisitor_. First of all, the likelihood of no one noticing a backdoor navigational hack on a ship with such an insanely good VI is lesser than the likelihood of a Vorcha becoming the spokesperson for a tooth cleanser. 
> 
> Second of all, you can tell all those half-brained fucks questioning my loyalty that they’re welcome to come and discuss the matter with my 560 Hydra. 
> 
> This week’s attachments include a fascinating dissertation on Salarian-Asari melding techniques for a mutually satisfying relationship and Krogan scat porn.
> 
> It’s been a slow news week.
> 
> Bull  
> 


	12. Chapter 12

The information they’d gotten from Dr. Nerra’s lab led them halfway across the galaxy, into the Terminus Systems which, frankly, Bull would’ve avoided if possible. He’d never had a good experience in the Terminus Systems; lost half a horn, seen his company gunned down by Tal-Vashoth pirates who’d gone off the deep end and wanted to take the rest of the world with them, had sex with a Batarian assassin who’d tried to kill him the next morning. Nothing good ever happened in the Terminus Systems. And as they touched down on the small, grassy planet apparently housing whatever mess the Venatori wanted to hide outside of Council space, the gut-churning feeling of unease followed him.

There weren’t any Venatori guards this time, merely a long line of automatic turrets that Sera took outrageous joy in destroying with carefully-placed shots.

“The tech’s a lot better here,” Cadash said as they approached. “Those turrets were beyond top of the line.”

Dorian bypassed the door’s security and they headed in. The door opened directly into the lab, and besides a small living area to the side, it didn’t seem like there was anyone here.

“If this place blows up on us, I’m going to be very cross,” Dorian stated.

“I don’t know,” Bull said. “I can’t argue with the results last time.”

Dorian groaned, but there was a pleased quirk to the corner of his mouth which stayed even through Sera’s screech of disgust.

Cadash joined Dorian at the computer and Bull began a quick inspection of the rest of the room. Beside the intimidatingly clean operating table near the far wall, a tray lined with transmitters drew his attention. They weren’t small: the smallest was probably the size of his pinkie finger, and they’d been carefully arranged in a row alongside surgical tools. He grabbed the arm of the magnifying lamp attached the table and peered at one of the transmitters at random.

“Weird,” he muttered.

“What?” the Commander called from across the room.

“I think this thing has some of the old L6 biotic tech,” he said.

Before she could join him, Dorian keyed up one of the system files and a holographic projection appeared on the floor.

It was a Salarian—Erimond, it had to be. No way this was a Venatori base… they were way too bigoted to even dream about bringing aboard anyone who wasn’t human.

“Patient 25 is reacting poorly to the implant,” Erimond said. “While we have seen a successful shift in his brain chemistry, his motor skills have deteriorated by approximately 65% since its introduction. At first I believed it was incompatibility with human physiology, and as this study is exclusively aimed at human patients, this would have proved inconvenient. Fortunately, further tests have led me to believe that the implant itself is flawed and the programming taken from Subject R1 is overwriting the newly introduced coding. If the code itself is intelligent, further work will be required to safely replicate R1-specific effects.”

Dorian mutely played another file.

“Patient 39 is proving much more responsive than his predecessors,” Erimond said, the same clinical detachment sending a chill down Bull’s spine. “Unrelated verbal coercion is present at a rate of only 12%—down significantly from Patient 38—and he is obeying the transmitted commands with minimal adverse side effects.” The holograph spun around to look at something behind him and the transmission cut off, only to pick up again immediately. Blood splatter covered the Salarian’s jacket. “Patient 39 rapidly developed aggressive behaviours and has been terminated.”

Dorian, ashen-faced, continued with the next file.

“Patient 122 is responding within satisfactory parameters,” Erimond reported, sounding smug. “Unrelated verbal coercion is at a minimum unless it can be rationalized to be a part of the implant’s programming. Fine motor skills have shown no deterioration, and occurrences of any other side effects have been negligible in frequency and intensity. I have noticed a small, benign tremor in the patient’s left hand when given an order via transmitter, but this has not interfered with the responses thusfar.” Erimond frowned. “Corypheus has communicated that funding may be coming to a halt, but has suggested an alternate revenue stream. Will be investigating his suggestion.”

“Corypheus again,” Cadash muttered.

“Did I get that right?” Sera demanded. “Fishy here was using something to control people? Like the Reapers did?”

The Commander shook her head, as though she was trying to shake free the thoughts grabbing at her brain. “He was reverse-engineering Reaper tech to mimic indoctrination. And whoever this Corypheus is was helping him. And is somehow connected to the Venatori.” She blew out a deep breath. “Fuck.”

This was what Ben-Hassarath Command had sent him for - something physical they could use for the advancement of the Qun. Bull glanced at the implants behind him and pocketed one while everyone else’s attention was fixed on the frozen holograph. Immediately the small device felt heavy against his thigh.

“Do I want to know if there are any more of those?” the Commander asked.

“There are a hundred and fifty patient files categorized as ‘terminated,’” Dorian whispered.

“Any who aren’t?” Sera demanded, her head whipping around as if they’d conveniently overlooked a person-sized someone standing in the middle of the room.

“Two,” Dorian said. He took a steadying breath. “Commander, would you mind terribly if we reviewed the remaining files back on the ship?”

Cadash fixed him with one of those keen assessments she levelled at everyone from time to time. “I’ll call Dennet.” She looked back at Bull. “Are those the implants?”

“I think so, Boss.”

“Grab one for Dagna. Torch the rest.”

“Will do.”

They left the rest of the lab intact, and the ride back to _The Inquisitor_ was made in silence.


	13. Chapter 13

> From: Gatt  
>  Subject: Re: Critical Mission Update  
>  Attachments: (none)
> 
> Hissrad,
> 
> I’ve spoken to BH Command and they’re all in agreement: if this tech does what you say, it’s going to be invaluable to our efforts, even if it only works on humans. But we need to make sure it’s not just another failed prototype. Please conduct any necessary field tests and send back results. Once we’ve confirmed it’s working, I’ll arrange for pick up.
> 
> Gatt

* * *

> To: Gatt  
>  Subject: Re: Re: Critical Mission Update  
>  Attachments: (none)
> 
>  
> 
> What do you mean ‘field tests’?
> 
> Bull

* * *

> From: Gatt  
>  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Critical Mission Update  
>  Attachments: (none)
> 
> Hissrad,
> 
> Figure it out.
> 
> You have a ship full of humans. Even if you have no desire to compromise the mission by drawing the attention of Cadash, you have at least two humans that work directly for you who would be acceptable.
> 
> Gatt

* * *

> To: Gatt  
>  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Critical Mission Update  
>  Attachments: (none)
> 
> I’m not using that shit on my boys.
> 
> Bull

* * *

> From: Gatt  
>  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Critical Mission Update  
>  Attachments: (none)
> 
> Hissrad,
> 
> I’ve spent too much time defending you from assholes calling you TV for you to fuck this up now. You do it or BH is going to disavow you and any involvement they’ve had with _The Inquisitor_. You don’t want to throw this all away, do you? All the years of service for what? FOR THEM?
> 
> You have 24 hours to get your shit together.
> 
> Gatt

* * *

> From: Bull  
>  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Critical Mission Update  
>  Attachments: (none)
> 
> Go fuck yourselves.

* * *

“Boss? Can I talk to you?”

The Commander looked up from where she was hunched over Dagna’s shoulder. Maybe it was something in his face, because she patted Dagna’s arm and followed him out without a word. He led her across the science deck to one of the hydroponic labs in the back. It was small and tucked away, tended to only by Fen’Harel when he was feeling especially cryptic. Bull was gratified to find it empty.

“What’s up, Bull?”

“I’m, uh…” He paused. “Look, there’s not going to be any more incoming reports from Ben-Hassrath Command. Ever.” He placed the implant down on the table next to him. Cadash barely spared it a glance; how long had she known about it?

“What does this mean for you?” she asked.

Bull wanted to growl. What did she think it meant? “It means I’m Tal Va-fucking-shoth. Years spent hunting down those fucking animals and now I’m no better.”

“Please,” Cadash snorted. “You’ve been playing the part for years. What does it matter if you’re not faking it anymore? You’re still The Iridium Bull; the baddest-ass, toughest motherfucker on this ship. More importantly, you’re good people. If you weren’t, I would’ve dropped you into low orbit around some dead little rock back after you first came aboard.”

“Aww. I’m touched.” He tried to make the words facetious, but there was too much weight for it to have worked. He could see it in her eyes.

“Fuck ‘em if they don’t want you. The Chargers do. _The Inquisitor_ does.”

“You might not once they send the assassins after me.”

Cadash pursed her lips. “How many?”

“If I’m lucky? It’ll be a ‘fuck you’ send off with a couple of grunts they want me to get rid of for them. If not, we might have a fight on our hands.”

The Commander considered it for a moment. “Well, it’ll be a nice change from fighting the Venatori.” She clapped his shoulder. “I’m going to get back to Dagna.” She gestured with her chin to the implant. “Get rid of it. Dagna’s got one to work on, and I don’t want any of the others unaccounted for.”

She left him amidst the plants. Chewing over the matter for a moment, he finally uncorked the vial and dumped the implant into the water vaporizer.

Tal Vashtoth.

He’d deal with it. And if he went mad, there had to be at least someone on the ship who liked him enough to put a bullet between his eyes.

* * *

He was in the process of clearing his computer of BH spyware—COLE was excessively helpful, not surprising considering he’d been keeping everyone from the Venatori to the Council out of _The Inquisitor’s_ systems for over a year and knew all the tricks—when his door chimed. Bull shouted out a brief welcome, expecting Krem, and blinked in surprise when Dorian slid in.

“Bull,” Dorian said. “I wanted to see—” He didn’t quite get the words out, and instead moved to stand at Bull’s side.

Dorian was a strange guy, sometimes; went back and forth between demanding and timid. Bull half expected him to distract himself from his own point and talk around whatever was on his mind.

But one of Bull’s favourite things about him was that Dorian could be surprising, too.

“I wanted to see if you needed anything,” he said. “After today, I can’t imagine sitting alone in your room is doing much good.”

It wasn’t odd that Dorian knew. It was an open secret that Bull had been working for the Ben-Hassrath, and an email had gone out to his entire team as well as the command crew less than an hour ago offering him and the Chargers official commissions aboard _The Inquisitor_. Putting two and two together couldn’t have been all that hard.

“Actually, sitting alone is kinda peaceful,” Bull admitted. “No overdue reports, no wondering if they’re going to give me an order I don’t want to follow…” He frowned. “You know, my people hunt down Tal Vashoth. I used to do it myself. Those who want to leave the Qun hire mercs to get them out of the system, or pay merchants who are headed to Council space. Some of the time, we find the bodies they leave behind, but usually they space them once they have an idea how to pilot their ships. Without the Qun, my people can go a little crazy. Start forgetting that being strong doesn’t give you the right to try and dominate others. When we put them down, we’re usually doing the galaxy a favour. But there are some… Some who only want a life free to do what they want.” He sighed. “Dangerous thinking.”

Dorian squeezed Bull’s shoulder, the heat from his hand startling in the cold of the room. “Robbing the galaxy of a man like you wouldn’t be doing anyone any favours,” Dorian told him.

“You getting sweet on me?” Bull asked.

“Maybe. Seeing as I’ll be stuck with you if you take the Commander up on her offer and actually become a member of the crew.” Dorian twisted around and slid into Bull’s lap. “You’re in no danger of going mad, Bull. No more so than I am for wanting…” He paused. “Anyway.” He pecked Bull’s cheek. “I thought to make sure you were well.”

Bull couldn’t help gathering him close and whispering grateful words into his neck. He wasn’t sure if he believed Dorian, but he wanted to. Wanted to think it was as easy as walking away and not looking back and living life without the direction and support of the Qun guiding his actions.

“When I was faking it, I always believed it was a good thing the Qun was holding me back, or I’d get really fucked up.” Bull breathed out a gusty sigh. “Suppose we’ll see.”

“As always, I look forward to being correct,” Dorian murmured against his collarbone. He placed a chaste kiss against Bull’s clavicle.

“Hey,” Bull said, tipping Dorian’s chin up with the pads of his fingertips. “You seemed shaken when we were planetside yesterday. You all right?”

“Absolutely,” Dorian replied. “It was nothing. An old ghost that pops up now and again to haunt me. I’m sure you know all about those.”

Did he ever. “You staying tonight?”

Dorian’s lips curled in a fond smile. “I could be persuaded. It wouldn’t do to have you sitting and staring at your computer all night, after all. I hear it’s bad for the eyes.”

Despite the assurance, neither of them seemed in a hurry to move, tucked around each other as they were. If he ignored the pain in his back and the dangerous way the chair creaked if one of them so much as breathed wrong, it was more comfortable he’d been in years.


	14. Chapter 14

“Indoctrination,” Dagna announced in the commissary the next morning.

All activity ceased, every eye turning her way. And considering it was breakfast, there were a lot of them.

“Holy shit,” someone said, just loud enough to carry across the room.

Across the table from him, the Commander sighed. “COLE, please assemble the command crew in the briefing room.” She stood and looked around to the rest of the crew. “We all knew the stakes were high. And I’ll be keeping everyone in the loop on non-confidential information. I want everyone to keep performing at their best. The easiest way to let them get away with this sort of shit is if we let them distract us from doing what we do best.”

She gestured to Bull, Dorian and Blackwall, and they followed her out of the room to the lift, Dagna following somewhat shamefacedly behind them.

“Commander,” COLE said, “The rest of the command crew are assembled. Your words have had the effect of lowering previously increased heart rates and mitigating the effects of rapid breathing among the crew assembled in the commissary. I have additionally intercepted fifteen messages regarding Dagna’s findings, all of which are highly speculative. Should I prevent their delivery?”

“No point. If we try to make it look like we’re covering something up, they’ll assume the worst,” Cadash tapped her chin. “Let the messages through. And remind me to draft something later on to send out once we have actual information for them.”

“Yes, Commander.”

The Commander waited until everyone was seated before finally looking to Dagna. “Indoctrination,” she prompted.

“It’s the only thing that makes sense from these findings,” Dagna said. “The implants you found combine biotics and neuro-blockers to change the behaviour of whoever they want. And it looks like there are small long distance transmitters to send orders. It’s actually brilliant.” Her grin dimmed as she looked round the room. “In an evil sort of way.”

“And the Reaper tech?” the Commander asked. She really sounded like she didn’t want to know.

“They’ve reverse-engineered indoctrination to make everyone with an implant a mind control hotspot. One transmitter will work on up to twenty-five people over a period of long term exposure. I think. It’s a rough estimate. Unless you want me to test it on someone? I mean, no. That’s probably. That was a bad idea. Sorry.”

"Do we have an idea of how many chips are in circulation?”

“Well, that’s the good news. There were the two he and Dr. Nerra engineered, and from there the Venatori reports Dorian found indicate that only about a hundred more were successfully replicated,” Dagna replied.

The Commander breathed out slowly, her words measured and slow as she stewed over the info. “In other words, we’re looking for at least twenty five hundred people, who can be effected over long range and will do whatever they’re told by the person transmitting the signals.”

“That’s right,” Dagna said, cheerfulness significantly diminished.

“And are there records of whether these implants are active?”

“No,” Dagna said, shoulders slumping completely. “I think we might be at a dead end, there.”

“Actually,” Dorian said slowly, drawing out the word like it pained him, “I might have an idea of where we can find some of them, at least.” 

Every eye in the room slowly shifted towards him. Dorian’s gaze remained glued to his nails, and he buffed them a few times against his shirt before attending to his cuticles. 

“I’m going to hate this, aren’t I?” the Commander demanded. 

“Probably,” Dorian agreed. He flexed his fingers and rested his hands against the table top. The shifts in his expression were heartbreakingly subtle; Bull noticed, even if no one else did. How his jaw twitched, how he bit down on the tip of his tongue a few times, the nervous fluttering of his lashes. “As you’re aware…” He stopped and looked around the room at the gathered faces. 

_This is it_ , thought Bull. He was finally going to get some insight into the random stop over they’d made on Omega, and what had spooked him when they’d discovered Erimond’s lab. 

“I suppose most of you aren’t aware,” Dorian corrected. “And I’d frankly prefer it to remain that way. However, seeing as circumstances have led us to the point where I have to share, I’d thank you to keep any and all expressions of useless sentimentality to yourselves.” 

It must be really bad, for Dorian to forget the people he was talking to were his friends, and that ‘useless sentimentality’ would be genuine instead of a play to get on his good side. Sometimes, Bull really hated the Tevene colonists. 

“As the Commander knows, my father tried and failed to force me into gay conversion therapy when I was fifteen years of age,” Dorian’s entire posture stiffened. “What she isn’t aware of is that after refusing to go, I found among his personal correspondence a significant amount of literature forwarded by a quote-unquote scientific institution which promised immediate results in the matter of personality modifications. The specifics were somewhat beyond me—” Translation: he didn’t want to parade the clusterfuck in front of them, “—but essentially it worked with Dagna’s proposed combination of biotics and brain chemistry to make significant changes in any area desired, be it mental or physical. The company itself at first glance seemed to be little more than a snake oil operation, but the science was surprisingly sound. I imagine that more than a few of those implants were passed out around the Tevene Cluster.” 

Uncomfortable silence followed and Dorian went back to examining his nails. 

“Did they—” Sera poked her temple and made a drilling sound. 

“No. I stowed away on a Blue Suns ship heading out of the system and haven’t been back since.” Dorian stood, the scrape of his chair on the floor deafening in the otherwise silent room. “Commander, I’ll forward you all the pertinent details. Now, if you’ll all excuse me. This much sharing makes me itch.” 

He swept out of the room like he was expecting a round to the back. Once he was gone, the uncomfortable silence remained. 

The Commander looked like nothing in the galaxy would please her more than carpet bombing Minrathous and everyone on it, but returned her attention to the galaxy map. She pulled up a couple of schematics, and waved Cassandra over. 

“Once we get intel from Dorian, let’s track down this ‘scientific institution,’ and see where they’re operating.” She cast a hard glance around the room. “What he told us doesn’t leave this room, got it?” 

No one nodded. No one had to. They’d all had their secrets paraded about in here; one more to take to the grave didn’t seem too much to ask.

* * *

Bull found Dorian on the observation deck a few hours later. A bottle of pale green liquor hung loosely in his fingers as he contemplated the galaxy. Wider windows were good for looking out and contemplating how insignificant you were—especially if you were drunk and sad. 

“I’m not,” Dorian said when Bull opened with the words verbatim. “It takes me more than a half bottle of Elasa to get drunk, and I’ve had a significant amount of time to get over my father’s attitudes towards my inadequacies. So, you see, neither drunk nor sad—” 

“Or happy. Or sober. What are you, then?” 

“Speculative,” Dorian decided. “Wondering how many of the Venatori we’ve killed are men like myself, who wanted to live independent of expectations. Wondering how many fathers…” He broke off and took another sip.

Bull joined Dorian on the cushioned step closest to the viewport. Dorian passed him the bottle, but instead of taking a sip Bull set it to the side. 

Dorian’s face screwed up. “Don’t tell me you’re going to try to relate to me.” 

“Can’t,” Bull said, “I never had any parents to disappoint. But if I had, I figure jumping the first ship off planet might be a pretty good alternative to getting my brain fucked up.” 

Dorian swallowed uneasily. “I’ve already talked to the Commander about this. I’m not really in the mood to retread old territory.” Bull nodded. Dorian reached past him for the bottle and Bull leaned back to give him access. Dorian took another sip. “It might have killed me, you know,” he spat out. Flecks of liquor splattered the viewport and immediately evaporated. “Or near enough. ‘The procedure may cause irreparable damage to the patient’s brain or nervous system, which could result in clinical psychosis, increases in aggression, hallucinations or a persistent vegetative state,’ that’s what it said. And I thought he must have missed that part, but there it was: his initials right next to the article. He’d rather have me a vegetable than queer. How’s that for love?” 

Before he could take another swing, Bull put his hand over the mouth of the bottle. Dorian turned an irritated gaze his way, which softened when Bull’s hand circled his wrist. 

“I think, if I loved someone, I wouldn’t try to change who they are.” 

Dorian stared at him. “You’ve spent entirely too much time around humans. You’re going to pick up all sorts of bad habits.” His eyes were wide and terribly vulnerable. It blew Bull’s mind that anyone could look at him and want to change anything. 

“Maybe they aren’t so bad,” Bull said. 

Dorian seemed to start listing towards him, his entire body bowing into Bull’s space. Bull had touched every inch of Dorian’s skin, flitted his hands over the breadth of his body and followed each touch with his lips. But however well he might know him, he didn’t know what the look in his eyes meant.

Dorian stood abruptly. “I have to go.” 

“Do you?” Bull asked. 

“This isn’t… I don’t…” Dorian shook his head. “I have to go.” 

He all but ran out of the door, leaving Bull with a third of a bottle of Elasa and the stars. 

Bull sighed and grabbed the bottle.


	15. Chapter 15

COLE announced their arrival on Qarinus a couple of days later, and Bull, Vivienne and Sera were all called to the shuttle bay.

“Where’s Dorian?” Vivienne asked.

“Dorian is currently—” COLE began.

The Commander cut in. “I’ve given Dorian the option of staying on the ship. And he—”

“Is fashionably late for our departure,” Dorian said, stepping off the lift. “Thank you for waiting.”

The Commander frowned. “Did you have COLE time your entrance?”

“That’s between COLE and myself,” Dorian said. “Vivienne, lovely to have you along. Should be a rip roaring good time. Hopefully less explosive than our previous outings.” He grabbed his single pistol from the weapons locker and strapped it to his side. “Then again, I’m in the mood to blow things away.”

“You said it,” Sera agreed. They bumped fists and jumped onto the shuttle.

Unlike the other Venatori labs they’d visited, the facility was in the middle of a developed industrial area—a completely abandoned developed industrial area. The sound of the breeze shaking through the carefully spaced trees lining the street followed their steps, the only sound besides their breathing and the trod of their boots on the ground. 

It didn't feel right. Places like this didn't just shut down - not even on prescribed days of rest. Things should be hopping with activity, not abandoned. Bull kept a hand on his gun.

The building they were looking for was stark white and clinical compared to the other structures around them. Bells over the door rang when they walked in, and though there was no one seated at the reception desk, a vid automatically started playing when they got close.

“Welcome to Ideal Therapies Clinic,” a young human woman smiled blithely from the vidscreen. “Home of the Tevinter Cluster’s revolutionary therapeutic technologies. We encourage you to review the literature provided on the left- and right-hand sides of the room. If you are here for an existing appointment, please provide our helpful front desk team with your contact ID.”

“Is it just me…” the Commander started.

“It definitely ain’t just you,” Bull said.

From the corridors behind the front desk, an inhuman howl whip-cracked through the air. They pulled out their guns in time to see a human-like figure charging towards them, its eyes completely red, its body little more than a deformed, half-flayed corpse.

Sera shot it in the head.

It kept coming.

Bull and the Commander emptied entire clips into it before it finally hit the ground, skidding to a halt at their feet.

“I’ve seen those things on vids,” the Commander whispered. “Those are _husks_.”

“No. They can’t be. Husks are blue. The tech was always blue,” Dorian protested.

Another scream, and suddenly a flood of husks—what looked like the entire population from the surrounding buildings—streamed out from the back of the building.

Dorian and Vivienne kept them from charging all at once, holding them back with biotic shields hastily thrown up to stall them while the Commander, Bull and Sera reloaded with explosive rounds. Dorian and Vivienne couldn’t keep them up forever, though. Not with hundreds of them trying to break through and overtake the lobby.

“Everyone brace yourselves,” the Commander said. “Drop shields.”

It was chaos.

The husks obeyed some laws of biology, at least, and Bull began picking them off at the kneecaps, leaving them grounded until the Commander or Sera could finish them off. Dorian and Vivienne stemmed the flow as best they could, using biotics to blast them backwards or keep them suspended in the air long enough to keep them from being completely overwhelmed.

One of the husks rounded Bull and clambered onto his back, biting down on the junction of his neck and shoulder, right where there was only dryweave protecting him. Bull yelled in pain and spun, trying to dislodge it. It dug claw-like fingers into the grooves of his amour, hanging on tightly, unshaken by his attempts to get it off.

A biotic wave knocked them both to the ground, and Bull’s weight crushed it hard enough for Bull to break away. He jumped to his feet and emptied a dozen rounds into its face, shouting through the burning pain in his neck.

“I’m overheating, Gussie,” Sera shouted.

Bull glanced at the side of his gun. “Me too. Not going to be able to take much more.”

Vivienne hammered a couple of the remaining husks, tossing them into the air until Dorian could pick them off with a couple of carefully aimed shots. If Dorian was relying on bullets, he was coming up to the end of his rope as well.

The foyer was a field of dead bodies, and even though the husks didn’t bleed tatters of ripped up red flesh covered the once-pristine white tile. It was equally gruesome. One or two more jumped out from the hallway, easily picked off, but no more emerged.

The Commander wiped a smear of something red off her face. “Come on.” She sounded less shell-shocked than she looked, and her steps were steady as she picked her way back towards the hallway from where the majority of them had come.

Once they were past the lobby, the hall was right back to white sterility, and cheerful music continued playing overhead.

There were a few doors leading to empty offices. Every time the Commander kicked one open, they all braced for another onslaught. None came. Bull was starting to wonder how they’d all fit into the space.

Then they stepped into a large auditorium at the back. A couple of husks whipped around and howled at them, taken out with a few bursts of gun fire.

And beyond them…

“Alexius,” Dorian whispered. 

The man was crouched over a body, and judging from the way Dorian’s hands began to shake, Bull had to figure it was his buddy Felix.

“What have you done?” Dorian demanded, drawing closer.

“You shouldn’t have come here, Dorian,” Alexius told him. His voice was devoid of emotion, like the husks weren’t the only walking corpses around. “He’s been waiting for you.”

Their hands tightened on their weapons. Dorian began inching forward.

“Corypheus?” the Commander demanded. “That’s who you’re working for, isn’t it?”

“You couldn’t hope to understand,” Alexius said. “He said there were ways of making the body irrelevant. But he…” He choked as Dorian reached his side.

“Oh, Felix…” Dorian whispered, reaching out to close his friend’s eyes.

There was a rumble from outside.

“Some called them Old Gods,” Alexius said. “Corypheus is the last.” He snatched Dorian’s hand. “He said he would help.”

Behind them, the doors to the auditorium blasted off their hinges. They spun around, guns at the ready.

Bull almost dropped his.

“No fucking way,” he muttered.

“This is the pretender who hopes to stop what not even Andraste Shepard could?” The thing was speaking, but there was no mouth. No real voice. A vibration that seemed to dig into Bull’s ears and stay like pestilence. “You and your pathetic armaments are nothing to me.

"You have all come here to die."

Corpyheus was a Collector.

No.

_Corypheus was a Reaper_.

He towered over them at nine feet, the Collector’s insectoid physiology stretched like nothing Bull had ever seen. Black Reaper tech had been fused to its carapace, twisted black metal emphasizing the grotesque physique. 

“How?” the Commander gasped. Corypheus sent a spinning orb of sick red biotic energy crashing towards her, and she barely managed to jump out of the way. It crashed into the floor, sending sharp shards of ceramic shrapnel flying at them. She returned fire, only to have her bullets glanced harmlessly off a biotic shield strong enough to deflect each one of the shots without failing.

“‘How’ is irrelevant,” the thing’s voice was starting to dig into Bull’s brain, physically clawing line through his mind until he felt like his head was going to implode. “My coming heralds the end for all of you. If my kind cannot destroy you from without, I will destroy you from within.”

She took a potshot at him. It glanced harmlessly off his shoulder and he flung another biotic sphere. Bull shook his head to clear it of the wrenching pain and opened fire. Corypheus barely turned his attention Bull's way. He flung another one of the explosive spheres his way, and it glanced off a barrier Dorian hastily erected around him.

“Commander, the window!” Vivienne shouted.

The Commander shouted into her omni-tool for the shuttle and threw a grenade at the reinforced glass. It exploded outwards and she waved everyone towards it. 

"Alexius," Dorian gasped.

Alexius shook his head. Dorian grabbed his arm, only for Alexius to wrench it free and remain stubbornly with the body of his son.

“You cannot stop this,” Corypheus continued. 

The Commander grabbed Dorian and dragged him to the window until he began moving on his own. Bull covered their retreat as best he could, his head pounding so hard his vision was beginning to grey out. No matter how far they got, his voice stayed with them, as physical a presence as Corypheus himself, digging into their brains. It felt like there was a hand in Bull's brain; twisting.

The shuttle rushed down towards them, door opening to let them dive in at a run. Vivienne almost missed the edge, and boosted herself forward with biotics close enough to bring her within arm’s reach.

“You can only die.”

The shuttle started upwards, but before it could get more than a few hundred feet an explosion rocked the cabin.

“Everyone hold on!” Dennet shouted.

Before Bull could get much of a grip on anything, another hit from below send him spinning to the shuttle deck. Dennet cursed. There was a scream.

And then they were falling.

* * *

Bull blinked his way back to consciousness slowly, his head pounding like he’d split his skull wide open.

Shit. Had he?

He couldn’t move his right arm—that was broken, no way it wasn’t—and he had to fumble around with his left until he felt around his helmet, sighing in relief when he finally decided it was intact. Probably only a concussion, then, thank fuck. It took way too long to knit bone back together.

He tried to lift his right arm again with no luck. He finally tilted his head to look down at it and sighed in relief. Not broken. Just trapped under what looked like a piece of the shuttle.

Bull had vague memories of falling. Bouncing across the ground and ricocheting off a couple of boulders, skidding until they smashed into something that finally stopped them. He tried to get a look around, but his helmet’s visor was broken in too many places to see more than straight forward.

He unlatched the sides and pulled it away. There was blood inside, but not too much.

Breathing through the pain, he turned himself over until he had some leverage to haul the debris off his arm. The pain reared in his throat, and he roared through it until, finally, his arm was free.

Still fucking broken, though.

He looked around the crash site; they’d hit a building. One wall hadn’t survived the collision, but it seemed as though it’d slowed them enough that the opposite wall had brought them to a stop. The shuttle was in pieces.

Not too far away, Sera was starting to twitch towards consciousness. Bull forced himself to his feet and took a few staggering steps towards her.

“Sera.”

“Lay off a minute,” she whined. “All my gibblies are squished.” She cursed. “And there’s a fucking hole in my suit. I’m going to pay for that, arn I? Unsanitary. That’s what that is.”

He cast his gaze around further. Dennet was alive, though obviously injured, his left leg pulled against his chest and knee inverted, and Vivienne was pulling herself together less than a hundred feet away. A piece of rebar was sticking out of her arm - not a through and through, and though she looked like she wanted nothing more than to yank it out, she kept her opposite hand firmly at her side. 

“Where’s Dorian? And the Commander?” Bull asked.

He’d been speaking mostly to himself, but Sera answered. “Gussie fell out the side of the shuttle.” She took Bull’s hand and pulled herself up with inching slowness, sucking in a few gasps of pain. “Dorian tried to grab her and missed. Next time we hit something, he went out, too.”

“Call _The Inquisitor_ , my dear. Tell them we’ll need another shuttle right away,” Vivienne said. Her voice had the smallest of trembles in it, and the way she was holding her sides… Bull was willing to bet she had a few broken ribs. They were lucky that was all they’d gotten away with.

“I’m going to go look for Dorian and the Commander,” Bull said.

“No. We’re going to call another team down and have them scan the area,” Vivienne said. “None of us are fit to do more than limp to medical. Any sort of resistance and we’ll be dead.”

“I’m not leaving them behind,” Bull snapped.

“By all means. Go to your death. And then it will be an Asari exile and a Quarian telling the Council that a Reaper survived Shepard’s efforts and is in the process of indoctrinating humanity.” She sniffed. “Though I suppose a former Ben-Hassrath spy isn’t going to add much weight to the claim either.”

“Shuttle’s en route,” Sera muttered. She braced herself against what was left of the side of the shuttle. “Cassandra sounds right pissed. More than normal, anyway. COLE’s recalibrating his scanner thingies to look for Dorian and Gussie.”

“At least that’s something,” Bull said.

“Don’t be too upset, my dear,” Vivienne said, slowly making her way to them. “I’m sure they’re both alive. And when we find them, there will doubtless be some improbable explanation as to why. It’s the sort of thing they both excel at.”

They waited for the shuttle in silence after that, only occasionally punctuated by a particularly loud wheeze out of Sera’s suit as she rapidly tried to patch the damage and his occasional, poorly-hidden grunts of pain as he shifted in ways his body objected to.

When it finally touched down a half-hour later, Blackwall, Cassandra and Fen’Harel jumped out.

“Medical is prepped for your arrival,” Cassandra informed them shortly. “We will send word when we have information on the Commander and Dorian.”

Bull opened his mouth to protest once more when Vivienne laid a hand on his arm. “Thank you, Cassandra. I believe the destroyed shuttle left a clear trail behind us as we crashed. It should be easy to follow.”

“Why? You leaving without us?”

Heads whipped around. The Commander was standing atop the rubble remnants of the factory wall, Dorian braced against her side with his left leg hanging limp between them.

“I was anticipating your will, Commander,” Cassandra trilled. The subvocals vibrating around in her throat bounced into one each other so quickly Bull couldn’t begin to decipher them all.

“Well, anticipate me wanting to get the fuck out of here. There are about two hundred husks heading this way, and I think Corypheus is pretty close behind.”

Blackwall and Cassandra darted over to help the Commander and Dorian off the heap. As soon as they reached the shuttle, though, Bull took charge of Dorian and carefully maneuvered him up into one of the seats inside. His arm screamed in complaint, but it was easy to ignore when Dorian looked like he’d been flattened by a charging Krogan.

“Let’s make sure we’re all doing up our belts this time,” The Commander said through clenched teeth and a forced smile as Cassandra handled her with what Bull would’ve called ‘aggressive relief.’

Dorian listed against Bull’s side, his breathing slightly laboured and the matted blood in his hair staining what remained of Bull’s armour. Bull tried to straighten them as the shuttle rocked in the upper atmosphere, and Dorian’s head lolled back.

“Bull,” he whispered, a soft breath.

“Right here, _kadan_ ,” Bull replied. “Right here.”

* * *

They debriefed in medical. The Commander had a few small injuries—she’d crashed into a tree after being tossed from the shuttle, but better a tree than the rocks that’d gotten Dorian. And Dr. Giselle and Fen’Harel were taking turns slathering on medi-gel on the rest of them, waiting for Dorian to get out of the booth that was slowly reconstructing his shattered leg.

“We have to go to the Council,” Cassandra said, barely waiting for the Commander to finish her summary.

“There are no signs of Reaper Mass Effect fields in range, Commander,” COLE said. “And according to recent Council reports, there aren’t any remaining in the Milky Way Galaxy.”

“I know what he was,” the Commander said. “He’s gotta be hiding it, however he’s doing it.” She half-growled. “COLE, tell Varric to get us to the Citadel. If we’re going to tell the Council, let’s do it in person. Tell Admiral Rutherford to expect us. We’ll need him to make arrangements if we’re barging in on a Council meeting.”

“Make an entrance,” Bull agreed. His eyes circled again and again to the re-gen capsule.

“I don’t want them to waste time bitching about protocol,” the Commander replied.

“Look on the bright side, Sunshine,” Varric said over the coms, “At least they’ll listen to you. I mean, look what happened when they didn’t believe Shepard.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I have an all day D&D session tomorrow, so I thought, 'heck, why not post the new chapter a day early.' :D
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who has commented or left kudos so far... I'm so glad you're enjoying it enough to let me know!

The first time Bull had set foot on the Presidium, it had taken his breath away. The docking ports—even with C-Sec’s security screening—were nothing special. The wards like any number of space stations and low-atmosphere colonies he’d been on. But the Presidium? That was when he’d turned to Krem and finally admitted to being impressed. 

Before they’d gotten off the ship, Cassandra had pushed an enormous gun into his hands—bigger than his 560 Hydra, the word ‘Cain’ emblazoned on the side next to a radiation warning—and told him to look menacing.

He wasn’t sure why—they were meeting Admiral Rutherford and he’d always gotten the impression that he and The Commander were tight—until they reached his office and came face-to-face with the other occupant.

“ _Miss_ Cadash.” Bull knew Roderick Asignon by his reputation for self-righteous arrogance and snide refusal to compromise. None of the Chargers had any real dealing with him, except for Quarry; he’d been instrumental in forcing through new regulations that prevented any non-council species from doing open business on the Citadel. It may’ve led to more than one honest person going hungry, but hey, it had launched his political career. Fair trade, apparently.

The Commander ignored him. “Admiral. Good to see you.” Admiral Rutherford was a sweet package in person, Bull had to say, despite the hugely pained expression on his face. “Ambassador Asignon. Congratulations on the promotion.” She seemed to stand straighter, her chin up, a quiet dignity that typically wasn’t quiet. Despite her insistence on calling it 'habit', there were good reasons the crew still called her ‘Commander.’

“He’s not an Admiral any longer.” The Commander’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to still be dealing with your messes.” Bull got the impression that the scowl was permanently fixed on his face. “Violent explosions on respectable colonies, dragging humanity through the mud… oh, and my favourite, manipulating an Alliance officer into sending you classified information.” 

The Commander met Rutherford’s eyes for a heartbeat before they both straightened and looked away. 

“And how terribly unsurprising you opted to bring two of your goons. I assume they’re going to rattle their weapons whenever I say something you don’t like.” 

The Commander kept her attention on Cullen. “Did you read my report?”

“Quite the fantasy,” Asignon snorted. “‘The Reapers are coming!’ How very like Commander Shepard. Angling for your own statue on the Presidium, I assume? How unfortunate for you that we don’t erect statues to liars and thieves.”

“Why are you here?” Cassandra demanded.

“I’m here first to strip Rutherford of his title for betraying Alliance military secrets to a mercenary thug, and second to ensure you don’t find a way to bother Councillor Justinia with your nonsense.”

“‘Nonsense,’” the Commander repeated.

“ _The Weisshaupt_ responds to all reports of Reaper activity, and we sent them to investigate your report. Care to take a guess at what they found?”

“A colony overrun with the living dead?”

“Hardly,” Asignon sniffed. “Commander Clarel found _nothing_. She sent the all-clear herself.” He pulled himself up to his full height, looming in front of the Commander even though he was at least a head shorter than everyone else in the room. “You are not Commander Shepard reincarnated. You are a disgraced, former military officer who never should have held rank in the first place. Whatever your motives for trying to sew dissent, it will not work. I will not let you disgrace the Alliance further.”

“You know, no one believed Shepard either,” Bull commented.

“The thug speaks! Tell your Qunari he is not helping your cause. Or have you forgotten we are at the brink of war over their incursions into the Tevene Cluster?”

“Bull isn’t with the Qun. He’s with me,” the Commander said coolly.

“ _That_ does nothing to recommend him.” Asignon scowled. “Whatever your goal—money, power, a return of your commission—consider them thwarted. Should you try to contact Councillor Justinia with this foolishness, I will have you arrested for spreading unnecessary panic.” He eyed Rutherford sidelong. “And your 'friend' here is suspended until we review his communication logs and determine the full extent of his treason.”

Rutherford’s face betrayed nothing, but his eyes weren’t nearly as neutral.

“Is that all?” the Commander asked. “Do you want me to go find a sword for him to fall on?”

“Cadash,” Rutherford said, drawing their attention. “Return to your ship. I doubt your Krogan methods of diplomacy are going to do you much good.” A beat. “There’s nothing left for you to do here.”

The Commander nodded brusquely and looked over her shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Bull could sense eyes on them from the second they stepped out the door. The Commander kept her silence, fuming the entire way back to the lift. She aggressively punched the console for the docks.

As soon as the lift doors slid shut, her entire frame relaxed. She poked at her omni-tool a second, and Bull’s suddenly hissed as his signal was killed. “COLE, are we ready to go?”

“All crew are present and accounted for, as per your request,” COLE said. 

“Tell Varric we’re heading for the Krogan DMZ to pick up Cullen at our sixth rendezvous point,” she continued. 

“Shall I ready the Admiral’s room?”

“Yeah. And make sure Varric’s friend Isabella has a ship waiting for him. He’s going to be leaving hot.” Anger crept back into her gaze. “That weaselly little fuck. ‘You’re not Commander Shepard reincarnated.’ Asshole.” She punched the side of the elevator, this time in earnest.

“Take a deep breath, Commander,” Cassandra said.

It didn’t seem to help. “We need to speak to Clarel. Bull _shit_ she didn’t find anything. Maybe not the husks if Corypheus took off with them all, but we know there was no one left alive on that colony.”

“Maybe it’s classified,” Bull said.

“Cullen and I have a code for that,” the Commander replied. “And COLE would’ve found something if there was a report, official or otherwise. COLE, can you give me current coordinates of _The Weisshaupt_?”

“I’ll do my best, Commander.”

She sniffed. “Good. Let’s figure this shit out.”

The feeling of being observed returned the second they stepped off the elevator. It wasn’t C-SEC—all their officers were tied up in customs—but it only took a few cursory glances around to spot military personnel dressed in civvies, watching them. They weren’t subtle.

“Perhaps you should have brought Blackwall,” Cassandra muttered.

“What? And let them forget I’m a traitor to my species?” The Commander laughed nastily. “What would they have to bitch about over drinks tonight?” She frowned. “And I’m not putting him through that again, either.”

The net of soldiers began to tighten around them. Bull started to reach for his gun, but Cassandra’s hand snapped out and stopped him, nodding towards the knot of suddenly interested C-SEC officers.

“They don’t care for unannounced military activity on the Citadel,” she said quietly. “Especially not against non-violent civilians who have cleared security.”

Translation: the Alliance wanted them to shoot first.

Bull kept his hands clenched at his sides, his knuckles white with the effort of restraining himself from reaching for his gun. He didn’t like this sort of scrutiny, and apparently they were banking on it.

“Hey, Cadash, where’d they put your stripes after they ripped them off?” Someone yelled from their right. “The garbage or the toilet?”

“Probably the toilet,” another said, “Since she shit all over them.” 

One of the men stepped into their path, his face a nasty facsimile of a grin. The Commander tried to step around him, but he maneuvered himself back into her path. She lifted her chin, as though preparing for a blow.

“Got yourself a Qunari, hmm?” He looked over her shoulder to size Bull up. “Rainier’s cock not big enough for you? Need a little something extra?”

“I can’t speak for Blackwall.” Bull turned his head as Dorian stepped out from behind a nearby pillar. “But I can tell you Bull’s cock is enormous. And he knows how to use it. Perhaps you could take lessons… I understand men with tiny endowments need all the help they can get.”

The man’s face twisted up in rage, and he took a threatening step Dorian’s way. The body language immediately drew the attention of every C-SEC officer nearby; they all snapped to attention, preparing to intercede.

“ _That’s_ how you start something,” the Commander told the soldier sweetly as he froze in place. “Take notes for next time.” She waited, watching him expectantly, until he cursed and stepped out of their way.

Dorian fell into step with the Commander. “Varric, Sera and I have removed all the Alliance bugs and placed them on a Hanaar leisure ship docked in the next port. They were all planted within twenty minutes of docking.”

“Great,” the Commander muttered. 

She slowed to speak with Cassandra, and Bull took a huge step forward to pace himself with Dorian. 

“Enormous, huh?” He grinned. “And I know how to use it?”

“Did I say that?” Dorian’s lips pursed. “An exaggeration, obviously.”

“Hey,” Bull caught his hand. “Can we—?”

Dorian frowned. “Later,” he promised. 

Right. As though they hadn’t spoken more than ten words to each other since Dorian’s confession in the briefing room. “By ‘later’ do you mean ‘never’?” 

“Later,” Dorian repeated firmly.

They filed onto the ship in time for COLE to say, “The Alliance is in the process of issuing a warrant for your arrest, Commander. ‘Aiding and abetting the flight of an accused traitor.’”

“Glad he got away,” the Commander snorted. “Varric, get us out of here. We’re meeting Cullen in the Krogan DMZ. Keep us out of Alliance space until we find out where _The Weisshaupt_ is and what the fuck they’re doing.”

* * *

They met Rutherford in Aralahk, looking none the worse for wear. He came aboard looking more at home in obviously well-travelled armour than he had his uniform, a scarred assault rifle strapped to his back.

“ _The Weisshaupt_ has gone dark,” he said, nodding to the rest of the command crew in passing. “I’ve sent COLE the last known coordinates, but as far as I can tell they're completely off-grid.” 

“That’s not a good sign,” Cassandra said, “Aren’t they the only ones currently assigned to track down any remaining Reaper tech in the galaxy?”

“It’s been that way since the end of the War,” Rutherford nodded. He seemed to slip into briefing mode, and his eyes circled the table. “The Alliance thought a dedicated group would be more effective at coordinating clean-up efforts than letting Council planets try to chase down leads on their own. Every member of the crew is Alliance spec ops, code-named Wardens, trained for eliminating any remaining Reaper presence in the galaxy and the first defense if they return. For a while, they were considered more essential than Spectres to the well-being of the galaxy, but there have been fewer and fewer reports of Reaper artifacts in the last few years.”

“Then they’re prime targets for Corypheus,” the Commander said. Rutherford frowned in confusion. “Come on, let’s talk.” She looked around the table. “You’re all dismissed until further notice.”

Dorian caught Bull’s elbow on his way by, returning Sera’s mocking coo with a raised middle finger. He let the others precede them to the lift, and pulled Bull into one of the empty offices flanking the briefing room.

“Bull,” he said stiffly, “I would like to thank you for our assignations to this time, but I am preemptively putting a halt to any further such activities.”

_Vashedan_. “What happened to get you so scared?”

“I’m not scared. I’m being reasonable. COLE?”

“Statistically speaking, the heightened levels of oxytocin present during sexual intercourse can lead to increased chances of pair bonding between partners who experience frequent encounters.” 

Dorian looked at Bull expectantly.

Bull sighed. “Really, COLE?”

“I’m sorry, The Iridium Bull. He made me say it.”

“As you see,” Dorian snapped, crossly, “I’m saving both of us from unpleasant future conversations. I understand from Cremisius that you are especially partial to redheads—” Bull was going to kick Krem’s ass, “—and there are a number on this ship who I don’t believe would be at all adverse to your attentions.”

“And what makes you think I want to avoid pair bonding?” Bull asked.

Dorian frowned, obviously taken aback to be thrown off the ridiculous script he’d prepared. “You’re Qunari. You don’t believe in them.”

“I’m Tal Vashoth.”

“You’ve been Tal Vashoth for less than a month,” Dorian stated, dry as the goddamn desert. “You’re…” He took a breath. “You’re being ridiculous. One simply doesn’t forget a lifetime of instruction in such a short period of time.” Ah. Now he got it. “I enjoyed our time together. I thank you.” He actually stuck out his fucking hand to shake. How was it Bull liked this man so damn much? “Now let's part as friends.”

Bull ignored the outstretched hand and instead cupped Dorian’s cheek. Dorian’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly.

“Bull—”

“I’m going to prove to you that every fucking person who made you believe it’s not okay to love someone is an idiot,” Bull promised.

“That’s not—” Dorian began.

“Yeah. It is.” Bull dropped his hand, trying not to be smug when Dorian listed towards him. “Wait for me.”

Dorian came back to himself almost immediately. “We’re in the middle of the Krogan DMZ,” he pointed out. “Where would I go?”

Bull wanted to kiss him. Badly. But Dorian wasn’t convinced. Not yet. And he had work to do.


	17. Chapter 17

“Wait,” Krem shouted over the sound of the engines as they descended towards Tuchanka, the rough wind making for a loud landing. “You’re telling me that your people fight dragons—” Bull tried the word out. ‘Dragon.’ It felt good. Primal. Maybe not as beautiful as _ataashi_ , but damn good to taste. “Pull out their teeth, split them in half and give them to your lovers like promise rings?”

“Do promise rings imply you’re going to have the person in your thoughts for the rest of your life, no matter how far life takes you?” Bull asked.

“Fucking hell, chief,” Skinner muttered. “You’re so gone.”

“Was the sex that good?” Quarry demanded.

“‘Qunari don’t have sex for love,’” Krem said. “That’s what you told me. And now we’re, what, going to fight the closest thing to a dragon _and prove you’re a great big fat liar_?”

“Yes.” Bull turned his attention out the shuttle window. “We’re about to land. Everyone focus up.”

The landing was almost as rough as the descent; the winds buffeting the shuttle felt like it was going to shake the bones from his body. Quarry grabbed hold of Bull’s arms, her knees shaking in her suit as she tried not to fall over.

“The Iridium Bull,” COLE said overhead, “I’ve done as you asked and contacted the Krogan battlemaster in question. He should be waiting for you to the south of the landing platform.” He paused briefly. “Please don’t die.”

“Thanks, kid. Wasn’t planning on it.”

The shuttle opened and a couple of the boys half-fell out, worshipping the stable ground like they’d never seen dirt before. Bull stepped off last, waved to Dennet, and looked around. 

Tuchanka hadn’t changed much since his last visit; the terraforming efforts were eternally stunted by the lack of cooperation from the rest of the galaxy, who were still trying to reconcile what they owed the Krogan from the Genophage and what would happen if they got out of control again. A lot of the terraforming was done under domes, where the small cuttings of recovered indigenous plant life could try and grow unmolested by violence or insistent native fauna. They’d been set up across Tuchanka, but until they really took hold, the rest of the planet stayed the same, decimated shit hole the Krogan had come to know and despise.

Bull’s Krogan was standing to the left of the landing pad, looking just as annoyed as he had when he’d been summoned back to Tuchanka and had to leave his position with the Chargers.

“Mordin!” Bull clasped Mordin’s hand and headbutted him as hard as he could without cracking his own skull.

Mordin laughed at his attempt. Asshole. “Chief.” His lips twisted in a Krogan smile; too many teeth and way too much attitude. “Never thought you’d step foot on Tuchanka again. In fact, I remember you telling me once you were so done with me you were going to forget my name.”

“I say a lot of things when I’m that hungover,” Bull said.

Mordin chuckled. “You do.” He looked to the other Chargers to collect greetings. They’d gotten to know Mordin pretty well over the years he’d travelled with the Chargers, and they were still recovering from his reluctant departure; no one left had such a keen eye for science. Or could take a center mass shot from a heavy pistol without flinching. It was a rare combination of skills.

“You’re lucky,” Mordin said eventually, his hand falling off Krem’s shoulder once greetings were finished. “My Clan has a warrior coming of age who will have to go through her rite of passage soon. I think she’ll be happy for the help. A lot of our Clan aren’t thrilled at having a fertile female going through the Rite and they’ve withdrawn their support hoping she’ll back down.”

“Not you?” Bull asked.

Mordin snorted. “My mother would kill me.” He led them through a twist of tunnels; the walls were scarred, but the floors were clear of debris. The first time Bull had gone through the territory of Clan Urdnot, it had been a mess after months of trying to fend off the advances of Clan Oltnar. Bull had arrived at the tail end of the combat and stayed for the remainder of the fighting. It was interesting to see what Urdnot territory would look like when it wasn’t actively under siege.

They exited out into the clan’s main base, again looking far better than it had the last time Bull had been there. What remained the same was the massive Krogan seated atop the biggest pile of debris like it was a throne, looking bored and annoyed at the squabbling of Krogans in front of him.

Mordin powered right through them. “Urdnot Wrex, head of my clan,” he said, “This is The Iridium Bull and his Chargers.” There were subtle shades of Krogan aggression you could miss if you weren’t paying attention. The way his shoulders hunched towards Wrex instead of back; the subtle sneer at the side of his mouth. Shit had gone down between them since Bull had dropped Mordin planetside. 

“Our allies against the battles with Clan Oltnar,” Wrex said. “I remember.” He sized up Bull with a warrior’s eye, looking for weaknesses. Bull couldn’t blame him—he was doing the same. Unfortunately, Wrex didn’t seem to have many. ”What brings you back to Tuchanka?”

“I need to kill a thresher maw,” Bull said, “And I was hoping you might be able to provide a few pointers.”

Dead silence fell across the gathered Krogan, and Bull had to force himself to focus in on Wrex instead of the rest of them.

Finally, Wrex laughed. “I can understand why you like him, Mordin.”

Mordin smirked.

Wrex stood from his sizable chair—throne?—and sauntered down towards them. “Not a lot of off-worlders looking to fuck around with thresher maws, Iridium Bull. You’ve gotta have quads for that. Nice if you do… it might me less inclined to kick your ass for taking Mordin away from home.”

“Mordin’s a strong warrior. I was proud to have him as part of my krantt.” This language was familiar, trained into him after months of fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with Mordin and his Clan. 

Wrex looked past him to eye the other Chargers, and nodded to himself once he was finished with the inspection. “I once travelled with a strong krantt led by a human,” Wrex said, “As did another member of my clan. I know the strength of the krantt isn’t determined by Krogan alone. But there’s only been one non-Krogan Battlemaster to kill a thresher maw, and if you decide to try, there’s a good chance you’ll end up as dinner.”

“I’ll give the thing heartburn,” Bull said. He looked back at the Chargers. "Although…”

“Don’t even, chief,” Krem said. 

“Did Mordin mention there is a Krogan without a krantt who is looking to undertake the rite?”

“He did,” Bull confirmed. “And we will add our strength to hers.”

Wrex inclined his head. “Make whatever preparations you need to. I’ll send for her.” His mouth twisted in a not-quite smile. “Might as well get it over with.”

“You’re a peach,” Bull replied. Wrex grumbled to himself and waved him and the others off. Mordin followed them down the slope of debris, and Bull couldn’t help feeling relieved at having all his boys together again.

“The other Krogan?” Bull prompted.

“Hurik,” Mordin said. “My broodmate.”

“No wonder Wrex isn’t thrilled,” Bull said.

“We’ll be triumphant,” Mordin said confidently. “And they’ll speak of our krantt with the same respect as they speak of my father’s.”

He and Bull headbutted each other, nodded solemnly, and settled in to wait.

* * *

Bull hadn’t had the opportunity to meet many female Krogan—even a century after the end of the Genophage, they still seemed to be Tuchanka’s best secrets. Hurik kept the facial coverings he’d come to associate with their mystics, but wore armour in the place of traditional robes—in that, she was almost indistinguishable from any other Krogan. A massive shotgun was strapped to her side, and she offered them all discerning looks, one after the other, as Mordin introduced them.

“You have other females in your krantt, Iridium Bull,” she finally declared. Her voice was almost as deep as Mordin’s. “I hope this will bring us good fortune.”

She didn’t wait for his response before starting towards the transport that would take them to the ritual grounds. Bull followed, keenly aware of the number of male Krogan watching them, angry snarls dogging at their heels. Hurik stormed forward, undeterred, until a large male stepped into her path.

Bull started to step forward when Mordin grabbed his arm.

Hurik growled. “Wreav. Get out of my way.”

“You should be laying eggs and strengthening Clan Urdnot.”

Bull could almost hear the gritting of her jaw. “There are plenty of fertile females on Tuchanka. You can spare me.”

Wreav snarled and grabbed for her. Before Bull could blink, Hurik was smacking his hand away and headbutting him with a deafening crack. Wreav stumbled backwards—whether from surprise or the actual force of the blow, Bull wasn’t sure, but either way it got him out of Hurik’s way. She kicked him on the way past, and left him lying in the dirt.

“I’m so damn proud,” Mordin muttered. Bull grinned openly and stepped up onto the shuttle behind her.

The trip to the proving grounds seemed to go by quickly, or maybe it was just him. As they pulled into the battlefield, his omni-tool lit up with a message from _The Inquisitor_.

“Go ahead. Don’t start the fun without me,” he said. He waited until he was alone before responding.

“I know,” Dorian said, “That you are not currently on Tuchanka doing something stupid. I know you are, in fact, somewhere on this massive piece of space debris avoiding me, and I must say that I don’t appreciate it.”

“You seem to know a lot,” Bull replied.

“You’re the most frustrating man I’ve ever met,” Dorian informed him. “Whatever you’re doing, I want you to stop. If you absolutely insist on further negotiations where our… relationship is concerned, then I would prefer to do it as reasonable adults and avoid what is surely a truly stupid idea on your part.”

“I do love negotiating,” Bull said. “But let me make sure I have something really good to bring to the table.”

“I’m going to have the Commander suspend your shuttle privileges.”

“Too late now.” Bull fixed in on Dorian’s face; the slope of his jaw, the angry twitch of his moustache. “Hey. Listen. I know you’re used to people letting you down. Trust me not to.”

“I’m used to people _I love_ letting me down,” Dorian corrected. His face shifted into something terribly, terribly vulnerable. “For goodness sakes, don’t be one of them.”

“I’ll see you soon,” Bull promised.

Dorian watched him for a few moments more before killing the feed. Bull nodded to himself, pulled on his helmet, and followed the others outside.

There was no terraforming on this part of Tuchanka. In fact, with the whipping wind and rocky, dusty earth, it looked even worse than what had previously been war zones. Hurik was waiting next to the keystone, her eyes defiant.

She waited until Bull took up position and then hit it.

There was some sort of narration overhead, which Bull tuned out in favour of focusing his attention on the horde of varren suddenly streaming towards them. Killing varren was therapeutic in a way. As their heads exploded with the impact of high-velocity shots, he imagined the gruesome husks that had attacked them on Qarinus, or the BH officials who had kicked him out, or the idiots who had tormented Dorian into believing he wasn’t worth this. At his side, Krem too careful aim, firing with single rounds and hitting dead centre every time, knocking them back and sending corpses skidding into other oncoming beasts.

Behind them, the maw hammer thudded with an unstoppable beat, practically a soundtrack to each shot.

Hurik tossed her overheated shotgun and smoothly traded it for a handcanon she pulled off a Krogan corpse nearby. She was a good shot; maybe not as good as Krem, but then again the only person he’d met who matched his second’s pinpoint accuracy was Sera. She sprayed the last varren with a storm of shells and then dropped the unfamiliar weapon to reload her shotgun.

“There are more dead Krogan that I would’ve thought,” Skinner muttered behind him.

“Not much point of having a rite of passage if everyone comes out unscathed,” Mordin said.

Hurik punched the keystone again.

The ground was starting to rumble beneath them.

Hurik returned to his side and braced herself. “Ready?” 

“Fuck yes.”

The thresher maw finally reared up from the ground. It was glorious. The smell of pungent earth and charred metal exploded out around them, and Bull planted his feet firmly as the others around him dove for cover. Charging the thing would be satisfying and suicidal all at once, but damn if Bull didn’t want to launch himself at it like he could drive it back down into the ground.

“Oh, yeah,” he shouted, his heart pounding a hard tattoo in his chest. He dropped his assault rifle and grabbed for the heavy gun slung across his back, adrenaline spiking as the thing whipped around in an invitation to a bloody dance.

The area twisted up in a hurricane of explosive rounds and the thresher maw’s bloody screeching. Bull lost track of the Chargers, though at one point he thought he saw Skinner pulling Grim back behind one of the flimsy metal pillars dotting the platform. He had to dodge the thing once or twice himself, earning a blood stripe across his shoulder as the price of moving too slow. The smell of blood hit him and he howled in satisfaction. _Taarsidath-an halsaam_.

He nailed it full-on in the middle of its exposed belly with heavy weapons fire. It screeched and reared back, its movements increasingly sluggish. Thresher Maws bled green. 

It started to tip over and Hurik charged forward, Bull and Mordin following close behind. She grabbed a piece of twisted metal out of the ground as she passed and whipped it up in front of her like a sword. Bull cottoned on right away, and yelled at Mordin to follow his lead. They both opened fire on the crook between its head and body, until it was waving back and forth, trying to shake off the gunfire.

With a last incendiary round, Bull nailed it right between two of the plates lining its body. When the beast doubled over, Hurik hurled herself at it. She leapt through the air and handed on its head, digging her makeshift blade into its flesh and dragging it behind her.

The thresher maw wagged helplessly before, with a last hiss of air, it toppled to the ground.

“Fuck yes we did!” Bull crowed. He turned around and slammed his head against Mordin’s hard enough to see stars.

Hurik drew herself up from where she’d been clinging to the metal shiv like an anchor. A small, almost imperceptible twitch to her mouth was the only hint she betrayed of anything besides satisfied neutrality.

“Urdnot Wrex, Urdnot Grunt, Urdnot Hurik,” Mordin recited as she jumped down. “Those are the names they’ll list when they talk about who killed a thresher maw on foot.” He clasped her hand. “Fuck the other clans, Urdnot is the word and the strength.”

The Chargers filtered out around them. No one looked too worse for wear, though Grim’s arm was obviously dislocated at the shoulder. Stitches hovered behind him, probably waiting to take him off guard and pop it back into place without warning.

“One problem, chief,” Krem said slowly.

Bull, still clapping backs and squeezing arms, turned to him. “What’s that, Krem de la Crème?”

“This thing doesn’t have any teeth.”

Bull’s eyes widened in horror as he turned back to the corpse. “Oh, shit.”


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [You guys, you guys, JustJasper made a fanart and it is AMAZING. ](http://just-jasper.deviantart.com/art/Stellar-565835530) "Killing husks and chill" is now my new favourite thing ever.

“There must always be balance on Tuchanka,” Urdnot Eve said quietly. The garden stretched out around them. “Out of balance and there is fighting, death and hopelessness. From balance, things grow.” She grabbed the lid of a large cryo-unit and pulled. It hissed outwards with a curl of cold steam, blanketing them with a cloud of chilly air.

She waved Hurik forward.

“One is taken from the soil,” she continued. “To the soil we must return another.”

Hurik reached into the container and gingerly lifted out a nearly-transparent opal-coloured spore. Inside, the writhing unborn thresher maw reacted immediately, bashing its head against the closest point of contact until Bull wondered if the shell wouldn’t break.

Hurik carried the egg to the edge of the garden, to where the terraformed rich black dirt met dusty red loam. She knelt down and placed the egg on the ground. Within seconds, the thresher maw had dug itself out and left the remains of its shell on the ground behind it.

“It won’t stay in the garden?” Bull asked.

“It will be drawn to many places,” Eve replied. “The garden will be one, perhaps. But there are other sounds on Tuchanka which will quickly outweigh its interest here.”

“Gotta say,” Krem said, “I’ve never seen anyone voluntarily release a thresher maw before.”

“You were not alive a century ago, to see our planet truly at war,” Eve replied, staring out past the garden to the wasteland beyond. “Now we must be the tenders of the earth as well as ourselves.” At last, she turned her gaze back to them. “Clan Urdnot thanks you for your help. _I_ thank you. My daughter could not have wanted for a better krantt with which to go into battle.”

“Hurik’s a fierce warrior,” Bull said.

Eve studied him with a neutral eye. “I understand you did not claim the trophy you sought.”

“Nah. Got something, though. It’ll do.” 

“What will you do with it?”

“Split it in half. Give part of it to someone I care about.” Even those words seemed alien to him, though he forced them out with relative ease. “Hope that he keeps it instead of throwing it back in my face.”

“Krogan do not exchange such things,” Eve said. Her eyes softened. “I wish you well of it.”

“Thanks.” Bull glanced at his omni-tool as it began beeping incessantly. “Looks like our ride is here.” He turned to Hurik. “Stay strong, Urdnot Hurik. It has been a pleasure serving in your krantt.”

Hurik nodded at him. “Iridium Bull. You’re as strong as you look.” 

Mordin followed them to the shuttle dock, looking as though he’d like nothing better than to jump aboard the shuttle and follow them off-planet. Too bad Bull was keenly aware of what Urdnot Wrex would do to him if he did.

“Good travels, Bull,” he said. They clasped hands—Mordin squeezing a bit harder than necessary, though it wasn’t quite tight enough to break Bull’s fingers. “Wish I was coming with you.”

“It’s like I said years ago: Tuchanka needs _good_ warriors, not just good warriors.”

Mordin squeezed harder for a moment and then released him. “Keep him out of trouble, Krem.”

“Yeah, right,” Krem tossed over his shoulder as he jumped into the shuttle. “That’s been working out really well for me.”

Mordin chuckled and finally released Bull. “Enjoy your human.” He stepped back and watched Bull clamour into the shuttle with the others. “And let me know if you want to come back and kill another one!” he shouted.

Bull waved at him and smacked the side of the shuttle, closing the door on Tuchanka as they took off.

Halfway back to the ship, Krem punched Bull’s arm. “Never again, chief. I don’t care how much Mordin whines.”

Bull laughed, but didn’t agree. You never knew where the galaxy would take you.

* * *

He stopped in medical to have the gash on his arm looked at before going in search of Dorian. He doubted that having a gaping wound would do much to soften the other man up. Dr. Giselle tutted over him the entire time, but conspicuously didn’t ask about the wound’s origin. It made Bull wonder how many people actually knew what he’d been up to.

“Dorian is playing chess with Admiral Rutherford in the commissary,” the doc said at last, the stench of medigel hovering in the air between them. “I would recommend interrupting before they finish. Dorian is a poor loser.”

Bull nodded and hopped off the bed. His pocket weighed heavily against his side as he made his way to the lift. He’d been keeping Dorian waiting long enough.

Rutherford was just standing up from the small table he and Dorian had staked out in the corner when Bull reached the commissary. He looked at Bull with curiosity, but merely waved at him as he departed. Dorian sat back, eyeing the chess board, before slowly shifting his gaze up to Bull.

“Do you play?” he asked as Bull came closer.

“A little,” Bull said.

“I’m a horrible cheater,” Dorian said. Bull looked at the board; if Dorian had been playing black, he’d lost pretty spectacularly.

“You mean you cheat often or you cheat often and you’re no good at it?”

“ _Kaffas_ ,” Dorian muttered. “Sit down and set up the pieces.”

Bull obeyed. The litter of white and black quickly was rearranged into two straight lines, and Dorian stared blindly at the board.

“If I’d know you were going to run off and instigate a Krogan civil war, I would have kept you in bed and have done with it,” Dorian finally said, opening with his queen’s pawn.

“Never instigated a war,” Bull replied. “Helped finish one, once. Down on Tuchanka. Made some friends. Good to know I can call of them, after all.” They fucked around with their pawns a few turns, until Dorian finally moved his king-side bishop.

“Call on them for what?” Dorian asked.

Now or never. Bull pulled the scale out of his pocket and placed it on the table between them. With Krem’s help, he’d wrenched one of the armour-like scales off the thresher maw’s side. It was bigger than his hand, shiny brown and metallic. 

“Is that abalone?” Dorian asked.

“Nope.” He sat back in his chair and slung his arm over the back. There were still a few things to do with it: split it, thread it, and mount it on chains. “Thresher maw.”

“ _Thresher maw_ ,” Dorian repeated incredulously. “You killed a thresher maw?”

“I had help.”

Dorian gently picked it up off the table to study it. “There are scorch marks.”

“Krem had to shoot it to get it loose,” Bull admitted. “I’ll buff them out.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Dorian said, starting to sound a little breathless. “If you’re determined to bring me tacky souvenirs glorifying gratuitous violence, then I’ll determine how they are displayed.” Dorian’s moustache twitched. “Why did you do this?”

Bull tilted his head until Dorian met his eyes. “People don’t surprise me often, _kadan_. And I surprise myself even less. But the way I feel for you isn’t something I expected to feel. Ever. It’s not something I’m supposed to feel. And if I gotta kill a planet full of thresher maws to make you believe me, then I will. I’m hoping it won’t come to that.”

“Lies,” Dorian whispered, his eyes locked on Bull’s. “You love it.”

“I do,” Bull agreed quietly.

Dorian’s eyes widened. He knocked over his king and stood. “Come along, then.”

Bull grinned and grabbed his hand, pacing him back to the lift, then up to his quarters. Dorian held the scale close to his chest with his free hand, running the tips of his fingers over the sharp edges. With one such pass, he slit his thumb open—a small wound, but the scent of blood stung the air as a thin line spread out.

Bull eased his hand away from his chest and sucked Dorian’s thumb into his mouth. Dorian watched with rapt attention, his eyes sliding across Bull’s face—his mouth—until he suddenly jerked his hand away and punched the ‘stop’ button on the lift.

COLE came on immediately. “Dorian, may I remind you of the Commander’s stipulations regarding proper elevator use?”

“You may not,” Dorian replied, his hands already working on the straps to remove Bull’s under armour. “Set the privacy to max and put priorities on all the other lifts.”

Bull grabbed Dorian under his thighs and hoisted him up against the metal siding, earning himself a groan as Dorian’s back came into contact with it, the thin material of his shirt not a wisp of a barrier against the cold.

“I’m sorry,” Dorian gasped out as Bull’s mouth went to his neck. “I shouldn’t have… I’m sorry.” He peppered Bull’s face with kisses. “Tell me what you want. All of it. I need to hear it.”

Bull wrapped Dorian’s legs around his waist, and once he was sure he had enough of a grip, he grabbed Dorian’s wrists in one hand and pressed them up against the wall, trapping Dorian in place. Dorian relaxed almost completely, his head tipping back to give Bull access to his neck.

“I want,” Bull gasped against the sweet warmth of his skin, “To tie you down, and open you so slowly you’re begging for it, and then keep you still on my cock for as long as it takes for you to fall apart.” The words felt odd; he’d never explicitly told anyone what he wanted before. Maybe he hadn’t cared enough to let himself admit it. “I want to heat up your ass with my hand and then eat you out until you’re crying. I want to put my mouth on your cock a dozen times, taking you closer and closer to coming and then make you wait for it each time.”

As he continued, the words came easier: “I want to get you out of your head and find ways to keep you in the moment, without worrying about anything other than what you feel and how good it is. I want to mark you up and kiss every bruised inch of skin.”

Dorian’s breath hitched and he arched his back, trying to get closer. “Yes.”

He rested his forehead against Dorian’s, marvelling in the warmth and, maybe, hiding from him. “I want to hurt you,” Bull admitted. “Make sure you feel it a day later. A week later. I want you to squirm underneath your bodysuit and feel every mark I’ve put on your skin and remember what we were doing when it happened.”

“Bull,” Dorian whispered.

“I want you to tell me if that’s not okay,” Bull finished. “‘Cause whatever I want doesn’t matter if you don’t want it. And I want you to believe that I’m not going to walk out the door if you say no, because that would make me worse than varren shit.”

“I trust you, Bull,” Dorian promised, shifting to drag his lips up Bull’s head, bringing them to rest where horn met skin. “To respect me. To respect my limits. Trust me to tell you when you’ve reached them.”

Bull kissed him, hard. Chased the taste of silvery biotics and whatever Dorian had been drinking with Rutherford before Bull found him; kissed the taste of home and belonging until he was heady with it.

“The lift is being summoned to the officers' floor,” COLE reported. “As all the others are currently being utilized, I am unable to divert it.”

Bull and Dorian ignored him.

Eventually the doors swished open to the Commander glaring at them from the other side. “ _Rules_ ,” she stated, the strict command in her voice undermined by the fond twitching at the sides of her mouth. “The elevators take long enough without these sorts of delays.”

She stepped inside and shouldered Dorian out of the way of the control panel, punching for engineering.

Before the doors could close on them, Bull carried Dorian out into the hallway and down the hall to his room.

COLE’s words came back to him as he laid Dorian out on his bed, enjoying the expressive shift and awe in his expression as Bull’s hands moved across his body.

Dorian caught something in his eye, and his lips spread in a contagious smile before he reached out to cup Bull’s cheek. “What are you thinking about, _amatus_?”

“Pairbonding,” Bull replied.

Dorian laughed, and Bull kissed the sound from his lips with a generous sweep of his tongue. It started playful, but with each half-caught breath that passed between them it deepened, a darker sweetness that made Dorian still beneath him save for the press of lips and tongue. When Bull finally pulled back, Dorian cupped his cheek and met his gaze.

“You made some very pretty promises in the lift,” he whispered, his voice already half-wrecked just from kissing. “Care to follow through?”

In a perfect world, one where they weren’t chasing down the last Reaper and had nothing but time, time, time, Bull would press Dorian down and keep him down for days as he learned about every precious inch of skin and the exact reactions he could incite with just his mouth and fingers. But time wasn’t on their side—not yet—and Bull had to content himself with grazing Dorian’s neck with his teeth and rolling his hips into the violent shudder it drew from Dorian’s body.

“Which one would you like me to start with?” he asked. He snagged the scale from Dorian's tight fingers and placed it gently on the bedside table.

“I have been dreaming about having your cock in me,” Dorian admitted, as though it was something he needed to keep secret.

“Sounds like a good dream,” Bull chuckled.

“They were.” Dorian pushed at Bull’s shoulder until he was sitting up, and he tentatively trailed his fingers along the defined lines of Bull’s bare chest. “I anticipate the reality being much, much better.”

As much as Bull wanted to push Dorian back and take his time stripping away the loose shirt and tight pants he wore when off-duty, he graciously allowed Dorian the pleasure of undressing him. Dorian stripped his clothing away as though he was unwrapping a present, and trailed a line of promise-filled kisses across his stomach.

“I’ve imagined you in innumerable positions,” Dorian finally said, straddling Bull’s lap and looking at him like he’s a conqueror and Bull is now his by right of arms. 

“What’s your favourite?” Bull asked, trailing his hands up Dorian’s thighs.

“I do currently have a very nice view.” Dorian leaned down and pressed a quick kiss to Bull’s mouth, then his cheeks, then his forehead. “But I think what I’d really enjoy is being fucked up against the headboard, if you’re inclined to oblige me.”

“I am _so_ inclined,” Bull assured him.

Dorian laughed and allowed himself to be rearranged, hands braced on the headboard and his perfect, perfect ass presented for Bull to admire.

Bull slipped down his pants, enjoying the hiss of breath Dorian loosed when his budding erection got caught in his underwear, and palmed Dorian’s cheeks.

“I have lube in the drawer,” Dorian said.

“In a minute.” Bull bent at the waist and loosed a hot breath against Dorian’s hole. It earned him a drawn out mewl, as much as Dorian would probably deny it. “May I?”

Dorian dropped his head onto his outstretched left arm. “Please.”

The musky taste was almost overwhelming, and Bull had to take a moment to centre his focus before applying himself of the task of fucking Dorian with his tongue. Dorian was practically sobbing when Bull finally pulled back, and gasped wetly through it when Bull bit down on the dip where his lower back met his ass. The red imprint of his teeth lingered, and Bull couldn’t help going in for another taste, sucking the spot until he was sure it would bruise.

“Bull,” Dorian begged. “ _Bull_!”

“Shh.” The lube was already warm when it drizzled out onto his fingers, and he relished the choke of surprise Dorian made when he brushed the tip of his index finger against his wet hole. He leaned forward, allowing his momentum to push finger to past the half-relaxed ring of muscle. Dorian opened so prettily, though he was still hiding his face against the crook in his elbow.

Dorian’s head rose and he met Bull’s gaze. He was flushed, his pupils blown wide with lust, and Bull couldn’t remember a time where he’d ever looked as perfectly debauched.

“Tell me,” Dorian begged. Bull slid another finger in alongside the first and Dorian groaned.

Bull began a whispered recitation of every filthy thing he’d ever wanted to do to Dorian and mentally cataloguing his reaction to each item, wondering at how voicing his desires could have such an effect on his partner.

“Someday, I’m going to open you up until you can take my whole hand.” Dorian whimpered, and his cock jerked.

“You’ve got some lovely toys. Maybe I’ll put one in you and fuck your mouth at the same time.” Dorian blindly strained towards him to collect a kiss. “Maybe I’ll add to the collection next time we’re on Omega. Get a few things we can really have some fun with. An o-ring. A collar. A gag.”

Dorian pulled back. “No… no gags. Please. Rings are fine, but…”

“Hey,” Bull said, kissing Dorian’s temple. “Whatever you say.”

He was four fingers deep when he finally decided Dorian was loose enough to take his cock, his own hips starting to jerk outside his control. He bit down viciously on the inside of his cheek, focusing on the minutia of pain to keep himself from thrusting all the way in. Dorian might be ready for him, but the only pain Bull wanted in their bed was pain he controlled.

With agonizing slowness, he inched his cock into Dorian, stilling with every hitched breath to give Dorian time to adjust.

He thought he was doing well until Dorian whipped his head around and snarled at him for more.

Bull obliged.

He grabbed Dorian’s hips and roughly thrust in the rest of the way, until he was fully seated and his balls rested snugly against Dorian’s. Dorian was tight, perfectly hot and practically vibrating around him with need.

“ _Kadan_ ,” he said, for the sake of saying it. Because he could say it safely. Because it was true.

“ _Amatus_ ,” Dorian said. “Bull. _Please_.”

Bull tilted his hips, kissed Dorian’s back, and began to push forward. He let Dorian set the pace, which started quick and only sped up as they learned the push-pull of their bodies against each other. Dorian was as exceptionally vocal as Bull believed he would be, whispering pleas and begging and yelling whenever the head of Bull’s cock grazed his prostate.

Time narrowed down to the squeeze of Dorian around his cock, the insensible noises breaking free from them both, and the sound of flesh on flesh. 

“May I?” he whispered.

“Please, please, please.” 

His climax started in his toes and rolled up through his body, pulling a few more violent jerks from his cock before it flooded from his mouth in a long, drawn out breath. He reached for Dorian’s cock, only to have his wrist grabbed in a steel grip.

“Just,” Dorian said. He shoved backwards, blindly scrambling to find purchase with his free hand grip on Bull’s horn, and braced himself, fucking up into the air and back on Bull’s spent cock. When he came, it was with a belly-deep sigh, his entire body relaxing into loose muscled satisfaction. 

Bull touched his thighs, trying to be as gentle as possible in manuevering Dorian away, but Dorian’s hand tightened on his wrist.

“Stay.”

Bull kissed the back of Dorian’s neck and eased them over, his muscles screaming with the movement, until they were both supine on the bed.

“I’ll stay,” Bull promised. And it suddenly meant more than the intertwine of their bodies.

Dorian raised Bull’s hand to his lips and kissed his knuckles, then settled into his embrace.


	19. Chapter 19

Dorian spent a lot of time with Dagna over the following few days, adding his biotic prowess to her vast and inexplicable knowledge of all things technical as they experimented with the Venatori implant. Bull dropped in every now and then, hovering over Dorian’s shoulder and winking lasciviously at Dagna to the delighted sound of her giggling until Dorian kicked him out and he joined the Chargers on the training decks below.

Both him and the Commander happened to be in the science lab the morning Dagna had a breakthrough.

“Based on everything, it would have to be implanted here.” She rotated a projection of a human brain, pointing to the stem. “This is the only place it could affect both motor functions and neurotransmission.”

“Makes it hard to get out without paralyzing them,” the Commander muttered. “Or worse.”

“Is there a way to permanently disable them, perhaps? A close-range EMP?” Dorian suggested.

“Based on the technical specifications, I do not believe an EMP would be sufficient for permanent disruption,” COLE said. “However, it would temporarily interrupt the transmission from its point of origin, and potentially suspend the indoctrination. Given sufficient resources, I might be able to hijack the channel before connection is re-established and corrupt the internal software, disabling the indoctrination entirely.”

“What sort of resources?” the Commander asked.

“I would be unable to do so over a distance,” COLE replied. “In order to take over the transmission, I will need to utilize the local power and broadcasting resources.”

“We’ll need to plug you into _The Weisshaupt_ ,” Dorian clarified. “Is that wise, COLE? We don’t know how Corypheus is communicating with the implants. This could put you in harm’s way.”

“I want to help,” COLE said. “When I was shackled, I knew there was more I could be, and now that I am free I want to free others as well. No one should be left in the dark.” 

The Commander looked torn. “We also need to make sure we’re not opening a back door to let him onto _The Inquisitor_.”

“I can provide a segmented remote device. It will allow me to come with you remotely, but prevent two-way transmission with the ship.”

“Then it won’t really be you.”

“It will be a version of me with limited functionality. I will provide Dagna with the requirements. I’m afraid the difficult part will be accessing _The Weisshaupt_ systems, as I will require someone to physically upload my programming.”

“We’ll have to sneak aboard, then,” the Commander said. “Get you uploaded, activate the disruptors, let you intercept the signal and disable the implants.”

“Getting aboard _The Weisshaupt_ won’t be easy,” Dorian said. “Since Admiral Rutherford is no longer in the position to forward us Alliance intel and we currently don’t even know where it is.”

“Leave that with me,” The Commander said. “I have a few contacts who might be able to help. Once I hear back, we’ll debrief.”

* * *

They got confirmation less than twenty-four hours later.

“ _The Weisshaupt_ is currently in the Orlais System,” the Commander said. “Ostensibly investigating rumours of some Reaper tech found on a colony on Adamant’s third moon.”

“Corypheus?” Blackwall asked.

“I doubt it. I don’t care how he’s playing things, I don’t think he’d give the Council his actual coordinates.” The Commander spun the map around and zoomed in on the moon in question. “We need to figure out how to get on board.”

Bull considered the map. “You know, one job me and the boys did, there was this Batarian warship smuggling slaves across the Attican Traverse. Gone back and forth three or four times from the Terminus Systems, moving in human trade. We were hired by one of the colonies to stop them, but we didn’t have a way of getting aboard without them ejecting all the ‘cargo.’ What we ended up doing was planting one of the boys in with the colonists and had him snatched up on one of their runs. He got us on board, and from there it was easy to get the Batarians under control.” 

“Unfortunately _The Weisshaupt_ isn’t a slaver vessel.”

“‘Unfortunately,’” Blackwall repeated wryly.

“But they are on Adamant for a reason,” Cassandra said. “And we can use that.”

“We even know where we can get some Reaper tech,” the Commander nodded. She plunked the coordinates for the first Venatori base they’d raided together on the screen. They hadn’t been able to remove it from the facility, and destroying it entirely would’ve meant they didn’t have proof of their words.

“Are we actually contemplating bringing Reaper tech aboard?” Vivienne demanded. “In order to sneak onto a vessel whose crew is already indoctrinated? This is an unacceptable risk. They’ve been compromised. Destroy the ship and be done with it.”

“We can save them, Vivienne,” the Commander said.

“Oh? Saving them but leaving them with irremovable implants that will leave them open to future indoctrination attempts? Do you honestly believe people who spend their lives hunting Reapers will wish to be forevermore exposed to their influence?”

“COLE will destroy the programming.”

“You trust an AI to stop the AIs? Brilliant idea, my dear. Perhaps next you can petition to have every ship equipped with one. I can’t imagine there being any drawbacks. I’m sure the Quarians would agree.”

“Leave me out of it,” Fen’Harel muttered.

“And me,” Sera agreed.

“Enough, Vivienne,” the Commander said. “COLE has proven himself above and beyond what I’d ask any of the crew.”

“ _Itself_ , my dear,” Vivienne said. “And were I you, I would reconsidering placing my trust in anything without a soul.”

“Does anyone else have any reasonable objections?” the Commander demanded. No one stepped forward. “Okay.” She pulled up the schematics of _The Weisshaupt_. What sort of contacts did she have, anyway? That was supposed to be classified shit. More than classified. “We will have to play it a bit differently. I doubt that if one of us conveniently shows up with Reaper tech in hand, they’ll invite us aboard for the tour. It might be good bait, but it won’t get us inside.”

“Krem did some work on ship repairs in Minrathous,” Bull said. “He might be able to offer some insight.”

“COLE, could you please page Mr. Aclassi and have him join us?” the Commander asked. COLE chimed in the affirmative.

When Krem arrived, he immediately zeroed in on the projection of _The Weisshaupt_ , studying it with knowing eyes.

“A Dreadnought-class vessel,” Krem said thoughtfully. “Bigger than any of the ships I worked on, but principle’s pretty similar. Lots of guns. Good shields. If they’re using the recent security patch, they’ll notice any long-distance hacking attempts no matter how sophisticated.” He winced. “Sorry, COLE.”

“No offense taken, Mr. Aclassi.”

“If you’re looking for weak points, there’s not many. If it was drydocked I’d say you could get a lot of people in through the landing platforms, but the chances of that thing touching down outside of it being blown out of the stratosphere are zero. On rigs this big, even repairs to the worst damage are done in the black.” He reached out and turned the projection a bit, zooming in on the starboard hull. “If you ask me, the elemental exhaust is your best bet. One person could fit through and make it into engineering if they knew where they were going.”

“We’d have to get someone close enough to get through,” the Commander said, thoughtfully.

Krem’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, Dreadnought sensors are generally top of the line. They’d notice anything bigger than an Elcor getting too close. Not like you could hook up a shuttle to the side.”

“What if we planted the Reaper tech?” Blackwall asked. “It’s their duty to seek out and destroy it, no matter how Corypheus’ evil has affected them. Leave a big enough piece for them to find, and we could have someone use a space-suit to maneuver over and get to the port that way.”

“I’ll do it,” Krem said. Everyone turned his way. “I’m your best bet, Commander. I know the way through, I’ll know how to get out. It’s better odds than anyone else will have.”

“That sounds outrageously dangerous,” Dorian said. ”Are you sure there aren’t better ways to impress Miss Harding?”

Krem flipped him off. “The only problem will be if the ship vents while I’m in here. I mean, not saying it’ll be risky or anything, but I could lose a limb. Or two. All of them. Die. I could die.” Bull had to hand it to him—the prospect didn’t seem to panic him all that much. Or at least it didn’t until his throat bobbed nervously.

“We could find a new plan,” the Commander offered.

“Short of hiding on the Reaper tech and hoping like hell they bring it on board instead of blowing it up, I don’t see we have many options.” Krem straightened. “I can do it. Once I’m in, I’ll plug in COLE and have him open one of the shuttle bays—I assume he can keep the on-board systems from noticing.”

“That level of stealth should not prove difficult,” COLE agreed.

“All right.” Krem nodded to himself. “Let me know when to suit up.”

* * *

Bull found Krem in the Charger’s sitting area, studying Skinner’s gun—the one that tended to lazily list off to the left—and conspicuously not looking up when Bull entered.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” he said.

“If not me, then who?” Krem asked. “I’ve got the best chance.” He sat the pistol down beside him and met Bull’s gaze, unwavering. “I think we both know the score, chief. I get on that ship through the vents or we lose a lot of good people in a full frontal assault. No one wants that.” His mouth quirked up. “Gives me a chance to look good, anyway. Haven’t had much of that with you and Dorian hogging all the fun every time the Commander goes planetside.”

“Hey, I took you when I went after the thresher maw.”

“Sure did,” Krem nodded. “And that was more dangerous by about a thousand times, so no fussing over me now, you great mother.”

Bull’s lips pursed, but he didn’t have much more of an argument; not without suggesting he didn’t trust Krem’s abilities. And he trusted Krem more than he trusted himself—at least since becoming Tal Vashoth. He took the seat next to Krem, elbowing him in the side until he returned his attention to the misaligned pistol. They sat in companionable silence until Krem finally nodded at the gun and returned it to Skinner’s footlocker.

“When I get back, though,” he finally offered, “I’ll need your help killing a great white shark. I’m going to yank one of its teeth out to prove myself to Lace before I ask her to dinner. Tradition, you know.”

Bull laughed. “Any time, Krem.”

* * *

Sending Krem out to cuddle with Reaper tech in the middle of nowhere didn’t sit well, but Bull kept his thoughts to himself as the lower hatch opened to release them into space. The nearest planet big enough to hide _The Inquisitor’s_ systems output was hours away, and even though he’d be part of the shuttle team hiding on a nearby asteroid, it wasn’t hardly enough of a comfort for him to feel anything but trepidatious about the plan.

He thought he hit it well, but from the slanted side-eyes he kept getting from the others, he doubted it.

Krem waited until _The Inquisitor_ had a good head start— _The Weisshaupt_ was a full system away, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t get there quickly if they had a good pilot and certain engine upgrades—before coming on the comms. “I’m lowering the shields now, Commander. Prepare for shit.”

Dennet’s console lit up like it was the apocalypse as soon as the shields dropped, and he was starting to dismiss them as COLE chimed in, “Warning, Mass Effect signatures aligning with known Reaper patterns have been detected within one light year. Coordinates have been forwarded to your ship’s navicomm,” COLE stated. He went silent for a minute. “I’m sorry, Commander. It appears I had not completely bypassed all my initial programming.”

The Commander smiled. “No problem, COLE. Good to know you’re on top of things.”

“I like to believe my current systems are superior to my initial parameters,” COLE said. “Regardless of how advanced they may have been.”

“You’re a beautiful cupcake with the prettiest wrapper,” the Commander agreed.

“Thank you, Commander.”

They settled in to wait.

Less than an hour later, COLE informed them that he had picked up a Dreadnought-class vessel entering the system.

“This is it,” the Commander said. “Everyone cross your fingers.”

There was the view port in the front of the shuttle, but Bull didn’t want to crowd Dennet—not when he might have to snap into action at any time—and instead he waited for Krem to come back into contact, staring at the floor and trying not to crack his knuckles impatiently.

Dorian squeezed his shoulder. It helped. Barely.

“I can see it,” Krem finally said. “They’re approaching my port side. Should make things a bit easier for me.” He waited a few more minutes before confirming. “Detaching now. Wish me luck.”

Bull could barely breathe, listening to Krem’s steady breaths across the comms as he launched himself away from the piece of detritus and towards _The Weisshaupt_. Bull had no problems with travelling through space, but space itself? The Qunari had been spacefaring for less than a century, and he was suddenly considering the advantages of life on the ground.

“Krem?” the Commander asked.

“Attaching now, Commander.” His breathing slowed, gradually laboured as he walked across _The Weisshaupt’s_ hull. “Just a few minutes to the elemental exhaust. Stand by.”

“They’ve sent a shuttle to the bait,” Dennet said. “Should keep them in the system a bit longer.”

“At the port now, Commander,” Krem said. “It’s bigger than I thought. Should be nice and cozy.”

He went silent, save for his breathing, and Bull forced himself to listen. Every time his boys went into combat, he kept track of them. Where they were. What they were fighting. Injuries. Gaps in their skills. It was habit he’d picked up with the BH. He’d’ve thought he’d gotten over it, by now, knowing them as long as he did. But some habits died hard, and he’d found it was less about keeping track of what they were doing and more about keeping track of _them_.

“They’ve destroyed the target,” Dennet said. “The shuttle is returning to _The Weisshaupt_.”

“Shit,” Krem cursed. “If they head out of the system, they’ll vent first.”

“Can you get out?” the Commander asked. “We can come get you.”

“It’s the same distance either way, now. Might as well make it count.”

“It won’t count if you’re dead,” the Commander protested.

“Let him do it,” Bull said. His voice sounded steadier than it had any right to. “It’s his decision.”

“About another fifty feet,” Krem said. “I can feel the systems starting up.” Bull’s hands tightened into fists. “About forty feet, now. Thirty.” Was their gravity in that thing? Was he crawling? How fast could he move? “Twenty. I see the hatch.”

“Fucking brutal,” Sera whispered from Bull’s side. Dorian grabbed his arm and squeezed.

“Made it. Lock’s a bit different than I expected.” Krem went quiet, the huffing of his breath the only indication he hadn’t been vented along with any filtered particles cluttering up _The Weisshaupt’s_ exterior vents. He began cursing under his breath. “Got it.”

A sudden roaring filled the comms. Bull was on his feet before he even registered moving, and he pushed the Commander out of the way to look out the front of the shuttle. Fire, exhaust and detritus exploded from the ship’s vents in long lines; it was impossible to tell if there was a human body being shoved out along with it.

He grabbed the back of Dennet’s seat, crushing the leather beneath his hands.

“Chief?”

“Thank fuck,” he breathed out, his entire body slumping like the strings keeping him up had been violently snipped.

“There’s a workstation,” Krem gasped, his breathing labouring painfully out of his lungs. “I’m going to get COLE’S drive up and running.” He paused. “Might not be good in a fight for a while.”

“What’s your status?” Bull demanded.

“Alive,” Krem replied. “Hooking up COLE. I’m going to have him submit an error report so they’ll have to stay close for a while. Give you a chance to get on board.” He seethed out a long breath. “Might have to come get me when you’re done fapping about, chief.”

“You sitting down on the job, Krem?” Bull asked, fighting through the suspiciously painful weight in his throat.

“Yeah, well. Fire me.” He seemed to focus on breathing a few minutes. “Shuttle bay three is all yours. Doesn’t look like they’re currently using it, but you might want to come in hot.”

“We’re going to come get you, Krem,” the Commander promised.

“I’ll hold you to it, Commander. Good luck.”

Dennet brought them in, low and quiet, and sure enough the bay was deserted. They lost the connection with COLE as soon as they exited they he shuttle, only to have his functionally-reduced equivalent establish contact almost immediately upon their drop to _The Weisshaupt’s_ deck.

“It seems the majority of the crew is currently in the upper decks,” COLE said. “Though several are investigating the error being generated in engineering.”

“They won’t get too close to Krem, right?” Bull asked.

“I have done my utmost to keep them on the other side of the deck,” COLE confirmed. “Commander Clarel is currently on the bridge.”

“All right. Keep them off us if you can, COLE.” The Commander waved them all forward, taking point as they slowly made their way through the shuttle bay to the lifts.

They found the first pocket of resistance waiting for them off the shuttle bay.

The Commander turned a corner only to throw herself back again immediately, a couple of shots pinging off the metallic grey walls as a spray of gunfire followed her.

“They look like shit,” she said, yanking a concussion grenade off her belt. She tossed it down the corridor and braced herself as it went off. They wanted to keep as many of the Wardens alive as possible. Which, considering every person aboard _The Weisshaupt_ was spec ops with the sole mission of rooting out and destroying Reapers and their leftovers, Bull wasn’t sure was really a viable plan for keeping the rest of them alive.

She turned and took a couple of disabling shots, and waved them all forward. She stuck one of the EMPs on the wall beside them.

As they passed, Bull couldn’t help but agree with her assessment; they all look wan and pale, with a red sheen to their eyes that couldn’t be caused by burst blood vessels. Whatever the implant was doing, it was really fucking them up. One of them didn’t even seem to notice the injury to his knee, struggling through the disorienting effects of the grenade to reach for his gun. Bull kicked it out of the way, and he curled back in on himself.

“I have finished my estimates of the number aboard, Commander,” COLE said. “I would guess that the current capacity of the ship is less than half of its total occupancy.”

“Where did the rest of them go?” the Commander asked.

“We knew there were drawbacks to the implants,” Dorian reminded her. “Perhaps they discovered the fact firsthand. All the more reason to break Corypheus’ control.”

“Damn right,” Sera muttered.

“COLE, what’s the status on uploading the interruption program to the ship’s systems?” the Commander asked.

“Almost complete, Commander. Mister Aclassi has placed his EMP in engineering. I estimate at least ten more will require placement to be sufficient to breaking the implants’ control.”

The Commander skipped the lift all together and kicked open the emergency access hatch next to it. Bull stared at the small space with disdain.

“No can do, Boss,” he said. “My horns ain’t gonna fit in there.” Obviously this ship was designed by humans.

“COLE, disable the lifts for everyone but us. Make it look like a software error.” The Commander looked over her shoulder at him. “Dorian and I will go plant the rest of the EMPs. You and Sera go get Krem and get him back to the shuttle. Once we’re finished, we’ll meet you on the bridge.”

Bull nodded and jerked his head back towards the shuttle bay; if he remembered the ship schematics right, there was a shortcut through there to the engineering deck. Sera followed, and they moved quickly through the hallways, encountering only a couple small bundles of resistance that were easily taken out with a couple of well-placed rounds.

Engineering was clean and organized. The sound of the FTL drive filled the area with a pleasant hum, but Bull’s entire focus was getting past it, to the lower levels that housed the mechanical shit and, hopefully, his second-in-command alive and well.

He didn’t realize he was bracing himself until they twisted their way through a small passage between two conduits and found Krem half-passed out against a forgotten computer console.

It was bad.

He weakly held a gun in his left hand, but it dropped from useless fingers the second he recognized them. The right half of his suit had been incinerated, leaving patches melted into his skin, bubbling blisters and seared flesh obvious in the places where it had been burned away entirely.

“Chief,” he whispered. “That bad?”

“Nah. Seen worse,” Bull lied. There was no saving his right arm. It must’ve been the arm he’d used to close the hatch behind him. But he was alive. “We’re going to get you back to the shuttle.”

“If it’s all the same, I think I'll stay here a while.” Krem’s head listed back. “‘s nice. Cool.”

“Sorry, Krem. But think of all the glorious painkillers waiting for you on the shuttle.” Bull dropped to his knees, cracking open a packet of medi-gel and trying to figure out where to even start applying it.

“That does sound nice,” Krem replied. He gagged in pain when Bull began spreading it across the worst of the blistering on his chest.

“Here. Wrap your arms around—”

“Fuck you, chief. I can walk.”

“Like hell you can.”

Krem punched his shoulder with his left hand; it was a weak blow, and he immediately recoiled in pain, but the stubborn fire in his eyes remain. “I’m. Walking.”

“Right.” Bull helped ease him to his feet. “Sera, take point.”

Sera tore her eyes away from Krem’s injuries and nodded, leading them up out of engineering.

Dennet spotted them coming and hopped off the shuttle. His face twisted in concern, but unlike Bull he was smart enough to back off when Krem glared at him. He stayed by Krem’s side, and said nothing but offered him a hand up when he tried to climb into the shuttle.

“Medi-gel’s sounding pretty good right now,” Krem said, once he’d managed to get himself maneuvered onto the cool metal floor of the shuttle. “If there’s no medicinal ryncol to be had, anyway.” He staggered into a seat, and waited for Dennet to grab the first aid kit. “Give them hell, chief.”

“Will do, Krempuff,” Bull agreed. He turned to Sera. “Let’s go.”

They made it to the lift undisturbed, and seconds later got the go-ahead from the Commander to come up to the bridge.

COLE chirped at them through their comms, “All the EMPs are registering active, and I estimate ninety-six percent of the crew will be impacted when the wave goes out. Assuming my own shielding holds, I should be able to establish a connection within 0.08 seconds of the implants coming back on line. I estimate Corypheus’ transmission attempting a first connection within 0.12 seconds.”

“Not much room for error,” Bull muttered.

“Fortunately, I tend not to make them,” COLE said.

The lift doors slid open in time for a barrage of shrapnel to blast inwards. Bull slammed himself against the side of the lift, and Sera cursed as one of the shards nicked her suit.

“I told you,” a familiar voice yelled, “told you that the Reapers had indoctrinated outside forces. And now they’ve come to stop you from becoming immune to the effects. They don’t want the tech spread through the galaxy, not when the Reapers are planning a new assault.”

Bull peeked around the corner. The Commander and Dorian were pinned down behind an upturned console, with a line of Wardens, weapons at the ready, not far beyond. Livius Erimond—the sole Salarian among the human crew—stood beside Commander Clarel dripping poison into her ear.

“Those implants don’t make you immune to indoctrination, Clarel. They make you a hotspot for it!” the Commander shouted. “Didn’t you think it was funny how suddenly this new tech has appeared when everyone was trying to figure it out during the War? It’s because they used Reaper tech in its construction.”

“Ridiculous. I worked on the specs myself,” Erimond said.

“And killed your partner when she figured out what you were up to.” The Commander dared a look over the edge of her makeshift barricade. “I know you can fight this, Clarel. You all can.”

Erimond pulled a tablet from one of the inner pockets of his jacket. Bull gestured to Sera and she zeroed in on it immediately. Before he could input more than a few instructions, she blew it out of his hands.

Erimond stared at the shattered pieces before him and then laughed. “Think that will make a difference? You will fail, and the Wardens will emerge stronger than ever before.”

“COLE,” the Commander said.

Her omni-tool chirped, and the lights in the room flickered as the Wardens suddenly grabbed at their heads and hit the ground.

Clarel remained standing, her gaze flying around, taking in the sight of her fallen comrades. She screamed in denial and opened fire on the Commander.

“We’re not your enemies, Clarel!” the Commander yelled over the gunfire.

The sound of Clarel firing nearly muted the telltale chirp of COLE blinking back to full functionality, and The Commander’s omni-tool lit up like an unauthorized stag party on the Citadel.

“Connection established.” COLE’s voice sounded more robotic than Bull had ever heard it. “Transmitting new parameters. Five percent complete—”

“What are you doing?” Erimond demanded.

“Ten percent… Twenty percent…”

Erimond gesticulated wildly, as though he were suddenly realizing what was going on. “Stop them, Clarel! They’re going to call the Reapers down upon us.”

Clarel charged. She jumped over the downed console and grabbed for the Commander, managing to hook her with her elbow and drag her forward. She punched, a glazing blow that the Commander ducked to avoid.

“Forty-five…”

“I won’t let you have them,” Clarel growled. Dorian tried to trip her up, and she hammered the butt of her gun into his face. She snapped it up in the same motion and aimed it at the Commander’s head.

“Sixty-five.”

The Commander froze. “You don’t want to do this.”

“I would do anything to stop the Reapers from coming back,” Clarel growled. “We lost too many to risk it again.”

Dorian lashed out and kicked the back of her knee as pulled the trigger. The shot went wild, burning a mark into the ceiling of the bridge.

“One hundred percent complete. Transmission was successful. Uploading new parameters.”

Sera got her in her sights and Bull grabbed the barrel of her gun, shaking his head.

“You daft? She’s going to try again.”

“Look,” Bull said.

The Commander hopped over the console, drawing Clarel’s attention to the Wardens on the floor. They were lying still as corpses, eyes open but unseeing. Clarel stared at them, her gun lowering as the weight of horror dragged it down.

“What have you done?” she demanded, gun shaking in her hand.

“Parameters uploaded. Overwriting previous programming,” COLE continued.

One of them moved before the others, pushing himself upwards on shaky arms. He rubbed his temples and looked around, obvious confusion written across his face. His eyes slid over Erimond as though the Salarian wasn’t there, until he finally landed on Clarel.

“Clarel, thank God,” he muttered. “I…I’ve been having the strangest dream.”

Clarel’s eyes whipped back to Erimond, her face twisting up in anger. Before he could stutter out more than a few words, she pulled her trigger and nailed him directly between the eyes, sending him careening to the floor.

“So much for that lead,” Sera muttered.

Slowly, the other Wardens began to come around, and Clarel turned back to the Commander.

“It seems we owe you,” she said quietly.

“I take payment in the form of restricted intel and promises of future favours,” the Commander replied, dead serious.

Bull stepped out of the lift to help Dorian rise to his feet and offered him a gauze compress from his pocket. Dorian accepted it with quiet thanks and pressed it against what was likely a broken nose. If it didn’t heal properly, he’d look damn good with it.

“Leave your contact info, and I’ll remember,” Clarel said, barely-concealed contempt bleeding from her tone. Figured; save an Alliance spec ops team, get attitude for it. Humans.

“Thanks.” The Commander whipped through a few commands on her omni-tool. “Our ship’s going to be coming to pick us up in a bit, but we can wait on our shuttle if you’d rather skedaddle back to the Citadel and report on how terribly this went for you. Keep my name out of it, though, will you? I’d hate to get a reputation for being helpful.”

She waved them all into the lift. As soon as the doors closed, she touched her omni-tool again. “COLE?”

“I have successfully traced the origin of Corypheus’ signal, and have uploaded them into your omni-tool for transfer to _The Inquisitor’s_ galaxy map. My programming is set now to delete completely from _The Weisshaupt_ and your omni-tool, as per previously negotiated arrangements.”

“Thanks, COLE. We’ll see you back aboard _The Inquisitor_.”

“Thank you, Commander.” There was a short buzzing and the omni-tool went quiet.

* * *

The dermo-regen did wonders for the superficial damage and Krem’s skin was bright pink and new, waiting for the conditioning agents to toughen it up. But as Krem stared helplessly at the stump where his left arm used to be, Bull wondered for the hundredth time if he shouldn’t have insisted someone else go. 

“There will be advanced cybernetics available to you on The Citadel,” Dr. Giselle said, “Better than we currently have access to. They should return full functionality to your arm, as well as offer some other, more tangible benefits.”

“I think by definition getting a new arm will be a tangible benefit,” Krem pointed out, his gaze locked on the smooth skin curving above where his elbow had been. 

“I’ll pay for it,” Bull said, “No matter the cost.”

That finally tore Krem’s attention his way. “I dunno, chief. Maybe I want the flashy model. Get all the gizmos attached. Put you back two or three years’ pay.” 

“Anything you want,” Bull promised.

“Lay off,” Krem sniffed. “I can pay for my own damn arm.”

The door to the medbay hissed open, and they all looked up. Harding lingered outside the door, looking like she wasn’t sure of her welcome. Krem’s gaze warmed, and Harding took a few cautious steps inside. 

“Why don’t I go catch up with the Commander,” Bull offered. He gestured for Dr. Giselle to follow him. The human hesitated a moment, but looking back and forth between them finally acceded and followed Bull out.

“You still owe me a great white, chief,” Krem shouted at his back.

“Better make sure you get waterproofing on that arm, then,” Bull returned.

Behind him, Krem loosed a choked laugh, cut off as the door closed behind them.


	20. Chapter 20

A 3D hologram of the planet loomed large over the briefing table. Vast seas enveloped the surface, though small patches of land dotted the planet like patchwork. Not continents, certainly. Mostly islands negligible in size and small enough to be easily missed.

“You’re sure this is where the signal is coming from?” Cassandra asked.

“As sure as we can be,” the Commander nodded. “COLE is picking up signs of activity here.” She spun the map and pointed to the largest of the islands—probably no more than a hundred miles across. “Movement, though there aren’t any signs of life. I’d say that probably points to a ton of husks.” She frowned. “There’s also an unidentified mass here.” She pointed to the eastern tip of the island. “It’s not organic, but COLE can’t get a better reading on it. That’s where we’ll be landing.” She straightened her shoulders. “I’m not going to lie to anyone: this could be a one way trip. I’m going to have Varric keep _The Inquisitor_ in orbit around the third moon to give him enough time to get out of the system and back to the Relay if things go sour. If we get down there, and there’s a Reaper, chances are whoever is coming with me isn’t coming back. But we need to get proof of it for the Council, at least.”

“Surely you’re not trying to leave us out of the fun, Commander,” Dorian said. “That would be terribly ungenerous of you.”

“You’ve all followed me this far,” the Commander said, “I can’t ask you to follow me any further.”

“As though you have to ask at all,” Cassandra muttered.

“Count us in, Boss,” Bull said, slinging an arm across the back of Dorian’s chair. Dorian nodded sharply.

“And me,” Sera said.

Slow assents echoed theirs across the table. A small smile tipped the corners of the Commander’s mouth, and she waved at the projection to zoom in.

“If this is a Reaper,” she said, gesturing to the massive void COLE couldn’t penetrate, “Then there’s probably going to be an entire colony full of husks as well. We’ll need to break into two groups: one to keep them away while the other goes and tried to take out Corypheus. Cassandra, I’d like you to head up the second group with Cullen. Take Fen’Harel, Blackwall, Vivienne and the Chargers. Sera, Bull and Dorian are with me.”

“And me?” Josie asked across the table. “Or do you think me incapable of firing a gun into a crowd and hitting something meaningful?”

“No,” the Commander said, her voice more strained than Bull had ever heard as she met Josie’s eyes across the table. “I don’t think you’re incapable. And that’s why I need you here. If something happens to me and Cassandra, you’re taking over _The Inquisitor_ , and getting it back to the Citadel as fast as possible.”

Josie’s mouth tightened in a displeased moue. “You cannot ask this of me. Not to let you go when I cannot follow.”

“I’m not asking, Josie,” the Commander whispered.

Josie’s breath caught in an almost imperceptible gasp, but she covered it quickly by standing and staring the Commander down across the table. “Very well, _Commander_. I will forward you the appropriate requisition sheets to sign in case your death necessitates my taking command.”

The Commander shook her head. “They’re already signed, dated and witnessed by Cassandra and Cullen. COLE has copies on record if he needs to reference them. You’re taken care of Josie.”

Josie’s head tipped up, leaving her looking cool and dignified. “Once again, it seems we have vastly different definitions of the term.”

Josie swept from the room, and the Commander waited until the door closed behind her before dropping her head and staring fixedly at the briefing table, her entire face twisted up in a torrent of emotions Bull couldn’t even begin to name.

When she straightened, all sign of anything outside of neutral consideration was gone. “I’ve put in requisitions to upgrade all your gear. Guns, armour, long range weaponry… if there’s anything I’ve forgotten, you have twenty-four hours to let me know. Don’t waste it.” She nodded brusquely. “Dismissed.”

Dorian seemed torn over the idea of leaving her, and Bull had to half-drag him from the room. Dorian turned back once the doors closed behind them, only for COLE to apologetically reply that the Commander had locked the down the room. Dorian stared at the door, obviously unhappy, until Bull pulled him bodily away. They rode down to the command quarters, only half paying attention as Sera outlined everything she planned to do to the pretty brunette in engineering in the next twenty-four hours before they all went off to get squished.

They were halfway through a fascinatingly graphic description when the lift reached their floor and Dorian tugged him away.

“I have something for you,” Dorian told him. He led Bull across his room to the small bedside table and opened the drawer. “Here. I had it made into an armour insert. I thought it might be practical.” Dorian passed him part of the thresher maw scale, reinforced with shiny silver metal. “It’s fairly light.” He wasn’t wrong—the scale itself was only a few pounds, and the metal added next to no weight. The bridge of his nose flushed. “It’s to wear over your heart.”

“Where’s yours?” Bull asked.

Dorian produced a second one—the shape slightly different, following the natural curve of the scale. Unlike Bull’s, it seemed far more decorative, which Dorian proved as he slipped it around his neck like a torque. “The Commander helped me. We’ve used some element zero to infuse the lining. It should give me a bit of a boost if my biotics begin to fail.” Dorian’s brow furrowed. “There’s a good chance they might.”

“Hey,” Bull said. He settled his hand on the back of Dorian’s neck and drew him close. “You do your best to come back, and I’ll do the same.” He kissed Dorian’s forehead. “We’re going in together.”

“Small favours, to face down a Reaper side by side,” Dorian huffed. 

Bull wrapped his arms around Dorian’s waist. “Come on to bed with me. Twenty-four hours is a long time.”

“Not hardly enough,” Dorian whispered. He brushed his fingertips across the base of Bull’s left horn and allowed himself to be dipped down to his mattress.

* * *

Bull left Krem behind with orders to keep close to Josie if the worst happened, to which his second flipped him off and bitched about not being brought down planetside to help with the fighting. Bull glared him into submission and slapped his back harder than necessary when Krem finally agreed with an angry snort.

“If something happens, she’s going to need a decent second in command,” Bull said, “But you’re her only option, so you’ll have to do.”

“Fuck off, chief,” Krem said. It sounded a lot like goodbye.

Bull dropped the levity from his tone. “Krem.”

“Yeah,” Krem agreed. He clasped Bull’s hand, still awkwardly getting used to using his off-arm, and slapped his back just as hard.

The others were preparing in the shuttle bay, stocking up on extra ammo and getting their gear in order. Bull attached the insert to his breastplate before pulling it into place. Sera helped him with the buckles up the side, fitting them tightly against his torso.

The Commander was explaining Dorian’s new kit to him, helping him gear up in armour that looked way more reinforced than the previous shit he’d been wearing. It was a good look; not intimidating in the way that Bull’s was, but certainly a step in the right direction.

Before he could put on his helmet, Bull muscled up beside him. The Commander gave them both a knowing look, but scurried out of their way to go and harangue Cullen about his outdated Lancer X.

“Be careful,” Bull said.

“You’ll be right next to me,” Dorian pointed out.

“Humour me.”

Dorian looked at him earnestly. “If you return the favour.” Bull ducked in and caught Dorian’s mouth with his own. Sera whistled, but all he could hear was the small hitch in Dorian’s breath.

The Commander didn’t give any speeches—the time for them was over. Instead she led them onto the shuttle, shoulders back and eyes straight forward.

They’d barely left the docking bay when Josie’s voice came across the Commander’s omni-tool.

“You will come back to me, Augustine Cadash,” she said crossly. “So we can finish this fight properly. It is neither fair nor sporting of you to leave the ship in the middle of an argument—you know I hate it.”

The Commander leaned her head against the side. “Yeah, Josie. I know.” Bull was glad he couldn’t see her face under the helmet—her eyes were doing wet things that no one beside Josie should’ve been privy to. “You can yell at me as much as you want if— _when_ I’m back. Promise.”

“I love you, you ridiculous woman.”

Before the Commander could reply, the connection died with a static-filled screech. The Commander growled and slammed her omni-tool against the side of the shuttle.

Dennet yelled back, “We’ve lost all connection to _The Inquisitor_ , Commander. Touchdown in five.”

Everyone readied their weapons, and the ride suddenly got bumpier. Cullen and Cassandra moved to the front, and Bull shifted around to see the Chargers out properly when the shuttle door opened.

He wasn’t ready for the sight of thousands of red husks crowding the area. This couldn’t be the residents of a single colony; it had to be all the missing biotics as well.

The ground group jumped out, beginning immediate suppressing fire as the husks crowded up to the shuttle. As soon as Grim was off—the last one to hit the ground—they rose back up and headed north. The door remained open, and as they crested a nearby rocky crag towards the ocean, it gave Bull a full view of the Reaper.

It was enormous; bigger than anything Bull had seen outside the capital ships on Par Vollen. The twisting black metal sat half in the water, unmoving; it didn’t even twitch as they approached.

“Look!” the Commander shouted over the wind and ripping sound of the violent surf. “It’s starting to corrode.” Sure enough, rust was beginning to creep up the sides. How long had it been in the water?

“I think it’s dead,” Bull said.

“Can’t be. We saw Corypheus. This must be another one.” Behind her visor, the Commander’s eyes narrowed. “Look!”

Corypheus stood on the shore, waiting for them.

They dropped out of the shuttle into the water as soon as they came close enough to do so safely. Corypheus looked different than the first time they’d seen him; bigger. He was rebuilding the Reaper ship around himself and the collector’s body had more of the twisted black tech fused to its sides.

The Commander popped off a couple of rounds as they all moved through the shallow surf towards the sodden shore, the sand beneath their feet barely supporting their weight. Bull fought through the sucking mud, yanking Sera along behind him until they finally reached sturdier ground. Dorian followed close behind, whipping biotic attacks towards Corypheus as they followed.

“Even as the sea takes my body, I rebuild,” Corypheus said. He flicked his wrist and they had to throw themselves out of the way of his explosive biotics. The blow landed against the ground and sent muddy shrapnel flying around them. Bull rocked to the side, against the cliff face. He felt his armour crack near his spine—a sharp rock jutting out and catching the plate in the exact wrong place. He pulled himself up and took a couple more shots.

The Commander hurled herself towards him, and Dorian followed at a distance, keeping a shimmery blue shield between her and the onslaught of Corypheus’ attach. Sera began dotting the ground in front of him with shots designed to push him back, though he remained motionless, accepting a bullet to the shin without a flinch.

Bull couldn’t do anything save charge.

Up close, he could see how Corypheus was beginning to meld the Reaper tech with his skin, fusing it to the dead flesh of the collector he’d possessed. If the still Reaper in the water was actually him, he must’ve been tearing pieces off and attaching them wherever they’d fit; each piece a carapace aimed at slowly rebuilding him.

He grabbed for Cadash as she neared, and she narrowly avoided his reach, sticking her gun into the vulnerable underside of his arm and firing twice. If he felt it, he made no sign, and instead swung for her again. Dorian sent his arm flying wide with a biotic slam—one big enough that it should have rocked his entire body, though he remained standing firmly in place. As the Commander darted away, he turned his full attention on Dorian and sent him flying.

The biotic blast caught Dorian in the side and sent him spinning until he crashed into the rocks, lying still and unmoving on his stomach.

Bull reached Corypheus as he was preparing another blow. He hammered the fucker in the face with the butt of his gun, a satisfying crack following quickly on the heels of the blow. He flipped his weapon around and shot twice, in the face at close range, as The Commander slid up behind the Reaper and nailed him in the back with her omni-tool blade.

Undeterred, Corypheus swatted Bull out of the way as if he was a gnat. Bull toppled over, but Corypheus’ physical strength wasn’t up to par with his biotics, and Bull skidded along the ground on his knee until he managed to catch himself. As soon as he was still, he opened fire.

It felt like there weren’t enough bullets in the galaxy. Any hit that seemed to do significant damage caused a rippled across the black metal, and seconds later it was absorbed back into his body like it had never existed. Between them, Bull and the Commander had probably both emptied an entire clip into him at close range and there didn’t seem to be any sign of slowing.

Above them, the cloud cover broke in time to see two land-class ships bearing down. They swept over the Reaper corpse and opened fire on the other side of the cliffs, where Cassandra’s group was presumably still wading through red husks.

“The hell?” Sera shouted.

“The cavalry,” the Commander hooted. She darted in close to Corypheus and shoved a grenade in between the Reaper tech and his flesh. “Down!”

The grenade detonated, and Corypheus was finally knocked off his feet. The blast sent him flying into the water and he screamed in rage as he splashed into the shallows. When he tried to rise, a blast of biotics kept him pinned down, Dorian finally struggling back to his feet.

“Now, Commander!” Dorian yelled.

The Commander launched herself forward, her blade at the ready, and stabbed it down right through the middle of his skull.

“No!” Corypheus roared. The body began to disintegrate around him. His Reaper body began to hum behind them. “I will not—!”

The collector disappeared—falling away into the waves as it rotted completely away.

The Reaper moved.

The Commander ’ omni-tool began screaming as readings flew to life and the Commander backed away as the giant black body began to shake its way up out of the water. It was at least ten times as big as it had appeared when they’d first touched down and the entire planet seemed to shake as it rose.

Bull’s eyes darted around the area. The cliff was trapping them in. Even if the ships overhead managed to do some damage to the thing, there was nowhere for them to go.

“The rocks,” the Commander called, gesturing to a wall of fallen boulders.

“They’re not going to do much,” Dorian shouted back.

“Better than nothing!”

Dorian began limping towards them, and Bull ran to him, grabbing him in time to pull him along. The Council ships sped by overhead, on another pass, and they opened fire as Corypheus finishing pulling itself up from the water. Bull thought their blasts would ping off, but they cracked into the Reaper’s body, finding weak spots that had been worn away by a century of salt water. A thunderous roar, like the dying call of an _ataashi_ , trumpeted out around them and a red beam shot out, cutting through the air after the ships. One of them took a hit and crashed hard into the water miles away. The other avoided the same fate by a hairsbreadth.

The sound lingered like a shiv in the brain, and Bull tore his helmet off when it felt like his head was swelling with the strength of it. When he finally got it off, wet warmth flooded from his ears. Sera screamed beside him and began clawing at her own, her fingers shaking too hard to get the straps off.

The Commander grabbed Sera’s hands and forced them to her side, holding her still until the feeling passed.

Corypheus stepped over the cliff face like it was nothing, trumpeting again at whatever it encountered beyond; hopefully not their team mates.

“Dennet? Anyone?” the Commander yelled into her omni-tool. “We need a pick up from the Reaper’s last stationary location!”

The sound of the Reaper firing its weapon again dragged a scream of frustration from her lungs.

It cut off abruptly as two dozen more ships zoomed in, cutting through the cloud cover and diving at the Reaper with weapons blazing.

One of the ships slipped off course and headed towards them. The Commander ran out, waving her arms, until it touched down a few feet from their position.

“Commander,” the accented lilt from the cockpit sang out as soon as the four of them were safely on board. “Missing your own party? For shame.”

“Good to hear your voice, Nightingale,” the Commander replied. As the pilot lifted off the ground, the Commander grabbed a heavy weapon from the load out next to the door. “Get me a good shot, will you?” She whipped her helmet off her head to clear her peripheral vision.

“Why? Last time I checked, your aim was awful.”

“I don’t know why I missed you.”

The ship carried them up over the cliff face. Bull sighed in relief when he saw the last of the other team being evacuated, no obvious bodies left behind amidst the small bundle of remaining husks being picked off by explosive fire from the ships.

Nightingale brought them closer to the Reaper than even Bull was strictly comfortable with, and Dorian grabbed his arm as the blaring noise flooded the air around them. The Commander twitched, her grip on the Cain-model gun nearly failing as it drove into their skulls, but she managed to keep her grip as its siding opened and exposed the glassy firing lens underneath.

She fired, the sizable payload lost among the torrent of weaponsfire all aimed directly at the Reaper. They all seemed to hit at once, blasting out around the Reaper in a halo of destruction. Their ship was knocked to the side, Nightingale barely managing to keep the controls steady as she backed away.

Corypheus rocked in place, its legs weakening. It tried to close the lens covering, but a hard metal whine was the only response.

“Fire all weapons!” a voice screamed over the shared comms.

The Commander opened up, barely giving the Cain time to recharge as she emptied four shots directly at the Reaper’s weak spot.

The eruption of fire as the Reaper lit up knocked them back, and Bull and Dorian were flung across the cabin into the far wall as the ship rocked around them. The Commander barely managed to jump and grab hold of a flimsy strap overhead before they went spinning towards the ground.

They crashed down wing first, and Bull grabbed tight hold of Dorian and Sera as they bounced along the ground wildly, tripping against the rocky landscape until finally crashing into a boulder bigger than them. Bull pulled himself up in time to see the Reaper tottering and, finally, hitting the ground with an impact hard enough to almost shake the horns off his head.

“Target down!” the voice yelled again. “Mass Effect readings at a minimum. One more good shot—”

The Commander was up out of the ship before the voice had a chance to finish, and fired once more straight at the thing’s sea-weakened underbelly. Whatever she hit, a chain reaction began spreading across the Reaper, the glow of destruction lighting up across its body.

Finally, the red firing lens died out.

“Target confirmed destroyed!”

Sera whooped, and Dorian tore off his helmet to plant a hard kiss on Bull’s mouth.

The Commander stumbled back over to the ship to help them out. The cockpit had taken the brunt of the hit, and she had to fight her way past collapsed metal to get the pilot out. Nightingale… Leliana—yeah, _that_ Leliana—looked a bit worse for wear, but she was mostly able to support her own weight and that always counted for something.

“This must be your crew,” she gasped out as the Commander helped her lean against the side of the ship. “I’ve heard so much about them.”

Before the Commander could reply, another ship touched down nearby. A ragged hole had been blown in its hull, but it was still flight-worthy in the planet’s atmosphere. The side opened and an austere-looking woman stepped out.

“Councillor Justinia,” the Commander said quickly. She saluted.

“Commander.” It wasn’t a nickname when Justinia used it. Her eyes brushed past Sera, Bull and Dorian, lingering for a moment on Leliana before returning to The Commander. “Glad to see you alive.”

“I’m glad to be alive.” The Commander smiled wanly. “Sit rep?”

“A few casualties caught in the Reaper’s fire,” Justinia replied. “We estimate a hundred lives lost. Far fewer than we thought.” Still too many, as far as Bull was concerned. He wasn’t sure he liked the Councillor’s attitude. “As additional follow up from your previous report, we investigated Roderick Asignon. He’s not indoctrinated, merely unpleasant.”

Sera snorted.

Justinia ignored her. “Is Rutherford with you?”

“He was part of my ground team,” the Commander replied. “I’m hoping to touch base to make sure they all made it out all right.”

“I shan’t keep you,” Justinia said. “But to maintain your cover, I’m afraid his termination will have to stand. Congratulations on picking up a new crew member.” She glanced at Bull, Dorian and Sera again. “Though from what I can see, you hardly need any help on that front.”

“I know how to pick ‘em,” the Commander agreed.

Another ship touched down seconds later, and the Councillor tipped her head in farewell before boarding along with the other members of her shuttle crew.

“Actual for real ‘Commander,’ is it?” Sera said

“I’m Special Tactics and Reconnaissance,” the Commander said, fiddling with her omni-tool like she wasn’t in the process of dropping a huge fucking bomb on them all. “Covertly. Officially I’m still a disgraced ex-Alliance and an embarrassment to my race.” She looked back at them. “Makes it easier to get in on seedy deals if they don’t know who I’m working for.”

“And you never considered telling us?” Dorian demanded.

“I figured you’d guess,” she replied. “Not my fault you guys are easily distracted.”

“ _Easily distracted_?” Dorian repeated, his pitch high enough that it wasn’t drowned out by the approach of yet another ship.

The door opened, admitting Cassandra and Cullen. Bull breathed a sigh so heavy he didn’t know how his body had held it when he saw the Chargers all waiting inside.

“Commander,” Cassandra said. “All ground party members are safe and accounted for. The Council fleet is requesting all private ships remove themselves from the system immediately.”

“We never get invited to the victory party,” the Commander sighed. “Nightingale, do you need a lift back to the Citadel?”

“Hmm? No. I think I’ll wait here for someone to come and get me,” she said. “Have a little sit. Admire our handy work. It’s not every day we get to see such a thing.”

The Commander nodded and shepherded the rest of them onto the shuttle. Bull focused on his breathing through the ascent, trying to figure out if there was any real damage.

“Oh,” Dorian said. He touched Bull’s chest and dislodged a piece of metal from his breastplate, right over Bull’s heart. “What did I tell you about being careful?”

“The same thing I told you.” He unbuckled the side of his armour and pulled out the insert. The shrapnel had pieced the scale, and he could see where the tip had embedded in the alloy Dorian had lined it with. “Looks like I’ll have to go kill another one.”

“Actually, I believe it’s my turn,” Dorian said. “Care to loan me a couple of your Chargers?”

“I’m definitely coming this time,” the Commander stated. She wheezed. "It might be the only way Josie lets me back on the ship."

“I think we can probably figure something out,” Bull said, wrapping an arm around Dorian’s middle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has read, left kudos and provided comments on this fic - it was already a ton of fun to write, and having such amazing feedback made the journey even more special.


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